Published 14 January 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.a3162
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:a3162

Research

Impact of presumed consent for organ donation on donation rates: a systematic review

¹ Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD), University of York, York YO10 5DD

Objectives To examine the impact of a system of presumed consent for organ donation on donation rates and to review data on attitudes towards presumed consent.

Design Systematic review.

Data sources Studies retrieved by online searches to January 2008 of Medline, Medline In-Process, Embase, CINAHL, PsycINFO, HMIC, PAIS International, and OpenSIGLE.

Studies reviewed Five studies comparing donation rates before and after the introduction of legislation for presumed consent (before and after studies); eight studies comparing donation rates in countries with and without presumed consent systems (between country comparisons); 13 surveys of public and professional attitudes to presumed consent.

Results The five before and after studies represented three countries: all reported an increase in donation rates after the introduction of presumed consent, but there was little investigation of any other changes taking place concurrently with the change in legislation. In the four best quality between country comparisons, presumed consent law or practice was associated with increased organ donation—increases of 25-30%, 21-26%, 2.7 more donors per million population, and 6.14 more donors per million population in the four studies. Other factors found to be important in at least one study were mortality from road traffic accidents and cerebrovascular causes, transplant capacity, gross domestic product per capita, health expenditure per capita, religion (Catholicism), education, public access to information, and a common law legal system. Eight surveys of attitudes to presumed consent were of the UK public. These surveys varied in the level of support for presumed consent, with surveys conducted before 2000 reporting the lowest levels of support (28-57%). The most recent survey, in 2007, reported that 64% of respondents supported a change to presumed consent.

Conclusion Presumed consent alone is unlikely to explain the variation in organ donation rates between countries. Legislation, availability of donors, organisation and infrastructure of the transplantation service, wealth and investment in health care, and public attitudes to and awareness of organ donation may all play a part, but their relative importance is unclear. Recent UK surveys show support for presumed consent, though with variation in results that may reflect differences in survey methods.

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