Brain-dead Donation Rate in Month of Ramadan and the other Months: 2005-2014.

Regardless of the level of development, religion and beliefs have crucial impact on people's attitude towards organ donation. Although organ donation in Islam is obviously appraised, mainly due to lack of an appropriate infrastructure, post-mortem donation rate in Islamic countries is not comparable to successful settings. We conducted this study to assess the extent of contribution of factors that reduce the level of effectiveness, and also to determine the impact of altruistic feelings in the month of Ramadan on family refusal as the leading modifiable contributor to organ donation rate. All records of potential and actual brain-dead donors, referred to Organ Procurement Unit of the Iranian Tissue Bank, from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2014, were analyzed. In each year, the number of potential and actual donors in the month of Ramadan was compared to the mean value in the remaining 11 months. Of 1758 total potential donors in 10 years, 464 cases became actual donors (26.4% as overall level of effectiveness). The reasons for non-effectiveness were medical contraindications (25.4%), cardiac arrest before referral or during maintenance (7.4%), family refusal (30.8%), judicial refusal (8.7%), etc (1.3%). Analysis showed no significant differences between donation rates (both potential and actual) in Ramadan and non-Ramadan months for potential (Δ=3.55, 95% CI: -6.7 to 13.8) and actual donors (Δ=1.35, 95% CI: -2.3 to 5). Despite the undeniable role of religion and beliefs in the establishment of organ procurement program from brain-dead donors, there was no monthly variability in post-mortem organ donation rate.

Human Tissue Processing and Transplantation in MESOT States: How to Promote?

Middle East, with more than 650 million inhabitants, has one the lowest mean donation rate in the world in the context of organ procurement from deceased donors with <2 per million population as actual deceased organ donation rate in 2014. Tissue processing and transplantation in this region are also restricted to a few countries among those representing Middle East Society for Organ Transplantation. Aiming to promote human tissue processing and transplantation in this region, as a life-enhancing therapeutic modality, we have to share our know-how and facilities in order so that the patients in different countries gain almost equal benefit of this vital procedure. To take different infrastructure of Middle Eastern countries into consideration and their plans to extend their activities, this intention will be come to the reality and materialized by primarily sharing the processed tissues among member states in a centralized manner and to offer processing services and banking to locally retrieved tissues.

Regenerative Medicine in Organ and Tissue Transplantation: Shortly and Practically Achievable?

Since the beginning of organ/tissue transplantation, the therapeutic modality of choice in end-stage organ failure, organ shortage has been the main problem in transplantation medicine. Given the so far unsolved obstacle, all hope-raising procedures to possibly tackle this long-lasting problem can draw attentions. In this context, "regenerative medicine" sounds to be more promising compared to other approaches. To consider the huge impact of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation on the treatment of some congenital or acquired hematological or metabolic disorders and some advances to produce tissue engineered materials on one hand, and to take all aspects of this emerging and costly interdisciplinary field of research into consideration, on the other hand, inevitably makes this reality unchanged, in particular in countries with low or middle income, that allograft (from deceased or living donors) will remain for years as the irreplaceable source of organ transplantation.