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Show 144 Michael Whittaker school of medicine and health sciences As of March 2, 2012, data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) database shows the number of patients on the national waitlist is 113,306 with only 14,144 transplants performed in 2011. With the number of patients needing a life-saving organ transplant outpacing the number of potential donors, surgeons have turned to the use of organs from donations after cardiac death donors (DCD) to increase the donor pool. The Transplant Society hopes that DCD donors will someday provide up to 10% of the donations made in the nation. In an effort to effectively utilize scarce donor resources there is a need for an accurate prediction model to determine when a DCD donor will cease cardio respiratory activity in an organ procurement situation. Non-perfused organs cease to function properly if transplanted into a potential recipi-ent after roughly a 60-minute window. By not knowing if and when this will take place, this imposes ineffable tolls on an already grieving family. This also puts a strain on staff, resources, and generates a large financial burden on the hospital and donor organization. Other prediction models have hitherto proved to be inaccurate thus rendering them ineffective. Systematic review of outcomes such as vital signs, laboratory values, medications given, and other essential variables from the potential donor have yielded results from statistical analysis. Initial results have shown the most common cause of death in this population is from blunt injury followed by cardiovascular events. The highest rate of DCD donors occurs in the 21-30 year old age group. A total of 20 out of 129 (16%) donors did not expire within the 60 minute criteria accounting for a loss of 60 potential organs for donation (Figure 1). An additional 32% of organs had normal function after trans-plantation while 28% had either delayed or primary non function of the graft. These results will be included to create the DCD donor prediction model, which has the potential to be used by hospitals throughout the nation in order to more accurately predict if a potential donor will be eligible for donation, thereby alleviating unnecessary waste of valuable resources and mini-mizing the toll on an already grieving family. A PREDICTION MODEL FOR DCD DONORS IN ORGAN DONATION Michael Whittaker, Jonathan Harrison, Heather Thiesset, Andrew Redd, (John Sorensen, Jason Schwartz) Department of Surgery, Section of Transplantation University of Utah UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS John Sorensen Jason Schwartz |