Death on the roads could be the chance of life for some

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7450.1260-b

BMJ 2004;328:1260-1261 (22 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7450.1260-b

Letter

Death on the roads could be the chance of life for some

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Tragic and wasteful as dying in a road trafficcrash is, it is an opportunity for solid organ donation andprocurement (liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs).¹

Although it is incumbent on governments and institutions suchas the Medical Research Council to demand and develop strategiesfor reducing deaths from road traffic crashes, it is not unreasonableto believe that the same groups should promote every effortto support and sustain organ donation from people dying in suchcircumstances. Thus, some good might arise from an otherwisehopeless and seemingly futile situation.

Neither the European Liver Transplant Registry website (www.eltr.org)nor the recent paper on behalf of the same group states whatproportion of patients undergoing orthotopic liver transplantationdid so with an allograft from a dead donor who died as the resultof a road traffic crash.² Of 5183 patients undergoing such transplantationin the United . . . [Full text of this article]

Alastair D Smith, assistant professor of medicine

Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Room 105, Bell Research Building, Trent Drive, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710, USA