Critical Evaluation of Discarded Donor Livers in the Eurotransplant Region: Potential Implications for Machine Perfusion

BACKGROUND: There are still many offered donor livers that are declined during the allocation process. Machine perfusion offers the option to evaluate (especially marginal) donor organs and to better decide whether a graft has the potential of being transplanted or not. There is a lack of clear detailed data on why organs are declined and how many donor livers would have the potential of being evaluated in the machine. MATERIAL/METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 1356 donor livers between 2016 and 2018, which were offered by Eurotransplant and were declined during the allocation process; 284 grafts were from donor after cardiac death (DCD) and 1072 donations were from after brain death (DBD). The analysis was performed independently and blinded by senior transplant surgeons. RESULTS: There were 904 (66.6%) donor livers with potential to be evaluated as suitable grafts in machine perfusion, whereas 417 (30.8%) organs were definitely not-transplantable, mainly due to liver cirrhosis, (untreated) donor malignancy, cardiac diseases of the donor leading to a hepatic congestion, and/or systemic infections in the donor. Donors in blood group “AB” were disproportionally often rejected. Due to missing data, 35 (2.6%) organs could not be sufficiently evaluated. CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that many declined donor livers have potential of being evaluated by machine perfusion. Comprehensive use of machine perfusion is necessary and useful to improve the current organ shortage.