Audience (Please share this notice with anyone in your organization who would benefit from it.)
OPOs
- Quality Managers/Coordinators, Organ Placement Coordinators, Organ Procurement Adm/Mgr, Organ Procurement Coordinators, Tissue Procurement Coordinators, Medical Directors, Data Coordinators, Physicians, Quality Director/Managers
Kidney transplant programs
- Physicians, Clinical Coordinators, Program Administrators/Managers, Program Directors
Implementation date
Sept. 14, 2023
At-a-glance statement
New kidney biopsy fields have been added to DonorNet® and TIEDI®. These new fields aim to reduce inconsistencies in both the reporting of kidney biopsy results as well as the specific biopsy parameters reported.
What you need to do
Organ procurement organizations (OPO) are now required to provide the following biopsy data points on the donor record in DonorNet and on the DDR in TIEDI:
- Biopsy type
- Tissue preparation technique
- Number of glomeruli
- Number of globally sclerotic glomeruli
- Percent globally sclerotic glomeruli
- Nodular mesangial glomerulosclerosis
- Interstitial fibrosis/tubular atrophy
- Vascular disease
- Arteriolar hyalinosis
- Cortical necrosis
- Fibrin thrombi
A list of these criteria and associated response options is available in the policy notice. OPOs should coordinate with their designated pathologists to ensure these data points are available when kidney biopsies are performed.
No action is required on behalf of transplant programs. New biopsy criteria in UNet are intended to aid in kidney offer acceptance decisions and increase potential for future data analysis.
Additional details
Members may notice additional small changes to existing kidney biopsy fields including a label change for the existing ‘percent glomerulosclerosis’ field which will change to ‘percent globally sclerotic glomeruli’. This label change is present on the donor record and includes all instances of the field elsewhere in UNet:
- Waitlist acceptance criteria
- Offer Filters
- TIEDI DDR
- DonorNet match run initiation page
- DonorNet Donor Snapshot
Additionally, changes were implemented to the Offer Filters pop-up window in DonorNet to make existing biopsy fields read only. Biopsy information should be entered on the donor record, which will prepopulate the Offer Filters pop-up window to be used in applying Offer Filters bypasses.
For more details, please see this page.
Education and resources
An educational course is now available in UNOS Connect, the OPTN’s learning management system.
The course number and title are:
- SYS192: Kidney Biopsy Reporting and Data Collection
Online help documentation covering UNet functionality is also available.
If you have questions relating to implementation, contact UNOS Customer Service at [email protected], or call 800-978-4334 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET.
For policy-related questions, contact [email protected].
