Deceased donor organ transplantation: A single center experience from Cape Town, South Africa

Deceased donor kidney transplantation have been in place for more than ten years at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. This retrospective review between 1995 and 2005 reports the experience with 824 deceased donor referrals. Race breakdown showed that 321 donors were black, 154 white, 318 mixed race and 30 unrecorded. Consent remains a major problem in South Africa and we were unable to obtain consent in 43% of our patients. Only 20% of donors had natural causes of death – the majority died because of trauma/unnatural circumstances. For this reason the average age of our donors are 26 years. A and O blood group donors were the most prevalent with A blood group patients making up 38% and O blood group 39% of the donor population.