By Matt Batcheldor
In early 2020, Vanderbilt’s heart transplant program was among the first in the country to begin performing transplants using hearts from donation after circulatory death (DCD) donors. Similar to DBD (donation after brain death) donors, DCD donors have sustained devastating, non-recoverable neurologic injury.
Unlike DBD donors, however, DCD donors don’t yet meet formal brain death criteria – as such, the methods that are used for withdrawal of donor life support and surgical retrieval of DCD versus DBD organs differs. Read the full article in the VUMC Reporter.