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Reflections on Non-Heartbeating Organ Donation: How 3 Years of Experience Affected the University of Pittsburgh's Ethics Committee's Actions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Michael DeVita ,
James V. Snyder ,
Renéee C. Fox  and
Stuart J. Younger
Michael DeVita
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of Anestheslology/Critical Care Medicine and Internal Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
James V. Snyder
Affiliation:
Professor of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Renéee C. Fox
Affiliation:
Annenburg Professor of the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Stuart J. Younger
Affiliation:
Professor of Biomedical Ethics, Case Western Reserve University, and Director, Clinical Ethics Program, University Hospitals of Cleveland.
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Extract

In 1991, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) implemented a policy that permitted the recovery of organs from cadavers pronounced dead using standardized cardiac criteria (Non-Heartbeating Cadavers or NHBC). This policy allowed families that had made a decision to forgo life sustaining treatment to then request organ donation. This entailed taking the patient to the operating room, discontinuing therapy (typically but not necessarily a ventilator), and after the patient is pronounced dead, procuring organs.

Information

Type
Ethics Committees at Work
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Spring 1996 , pp. 285 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

Notes

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