In the United States, transplanted kidneys come from "beating-heart" donors, who include living individuals and those declared brain dead. Previous reports have shown acceptable outcomes when using kidneys from in-hospital cardiac arrest victims, but it was unclear if the same applied to organs taken from out-of-hospital arrest victims.

To investigate, Dr. Ana I. Sanchez-Fructuoso, from Hospital Clinico San Carlos in Madrid, and colleagues compared the outcomes of 320 transplant patients who received a kidney from a non-beating-heart donor and 584 who received a kidney from a beating-heart donor, some of whom were older than 60 years of age.

The investigators report in the Annals of Internal Medicine that the survival rates of the grafted organ at 1 year and 5 years for the non-beating-heart group were 87 percent and 82 percent, respectively. These rates were comparable to the corresponding rates in the younger beating-heart group, 91 percent and 85 percent, but significantly better than the rates in the older beating-heart group, 80 percent and 73 percent.

"Non-heart-beating donors are a viable potential source of ... kidneys for transplantation," the researchers conclude. "We encourage transplant centers to consider the use of non-heart-beating donors."

SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, August 1, 2006.