BMJ  2006;332:1274 (27 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1274

Letter

Spain's high rate of organ donation may hinge on local use

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

EDITOR—Barber et al draw attention to the high refusal rates in the UK as a major reason for poor transplantation rates in the UK, and contrasts these with the Spanish rate for 2004 of 33.0 per million population (comparable figure for 2005 is 35.1/1000 000).¹ A similar comparison for the refusal rate may be helpful. The UK transplant team's figure of 41% refusals must be contrasted with an average for Spain of 16.8%, with regional data varying from 9.6% to 30.5%.²

Historically transplantation rates in Spain have been high in areas with a strong regional identity and lower in central rural Spain, although these differences are declining. Anecdotally, one reason for Spain's low refusal rate may be a public belief that organs will be used locally and will therefore benefit people "like the donor." One wonders whether the perception in Britain is that organs may be used at . . . [Full text of this article]

10 Frances Street, Truro TR1 3DN graham.meagher@dnet.co.uk

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    StumbleUpon    Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Potential for organ donation in the United Kingdom: audit of intensive care records

Kerri Barber, Sue Falvey, Claire Hamilton, Dave Collett, and Chris Rudge
BMJ 2006 332: 1124-1127. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Armitage, J., Souhami, R., Friedman, L., Hilbrich, L., Holland, J., Muhlbaier, L. H., Shannon, J., Van Nie, A. (2008). The impact of privacy and confidentiality laws on the conduct of clinical trials. Clin Trials 5: 70-74 [Abstract]  
• Campbell, B., Thomson, H., Slater, J., Coward, C., Wyatt, K., Sweeney, K. (2007). Extracting information from hospital records: what patients think about consent. Qual Saf Health Care 16: 404-408 [Abstract] [Full text]  
• Kendrick, D., Lyons, R., Christie, N., Towner, E., Benger, J., Groom, L., Coffey, F., Miller, P., Murphy, R., for The UK Burden of Injury Study Group, (2007). Recruiting participants for injury studies in emergency departments. Inj. Prev. 13: 75-77 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

Read all Rapid Responses

The Spanish model: not

RAFAEL MATESANZ
bmj.com, 2 Jun 2006 [Full text]

Re: The Spanish model:

Graham Brack
bmj.com, 3 Jun 2006 [Full text]

Online poll

Find out more>>