ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: According to the German Organ Transplantation Act, donor organs must be allocated with particular regard to chance of success and urgency. However, the objectives of these guiding criteria - the efficient use of available organs and meeting the most urgent need - are in conflict with each other, as success rate of transplantation (TX) ordinarily diminishes when urgency increases. Current allocation guidelines balance these criteria differently depending on the organ. This is only justified in part by medical reasons. Thus, further considerations are essential to develop consistent allocation rules. Therefore, a discussion on the stated trade-off considering the far-reaching consequences of such allocation decisions is indispensable. This also implies taking account of public preferences. METHODS: In this pilot study, preferences of 250 participants were assessed using a Discrete Choice Experiment. Choice-sets for the allocation of a donor organ included 2 patients, who were characterized by 3 success- and 2 urgency-based attributes. Data analysis was performed by Counting Analysis and Hierarchical Bayes estimation as well as Student's t-tests for subgroup analysis. RESULTS: All attributes influenced allocation decisions significantly (p≤0.01). Both, patients with greater chance of success and higher urgency were preferred. As a whole, chance of success and urgency were equally important for the allocation of organs (53 and 47%, respectively). The importance of the success- and urgency-based criteria was quantified as follows: The post-TX 5-year probability of survival was weighted with 31%, the expected post-TX quality of life and the surgery survival rate with 11% each, the pre-TX 3-month mortality with 35% and the pre-TX quality of life with 12%. Subgroup analysis revealed significant differences. CONCLUSION: The pilot study was successful in analyzing the balance of the guiding criteria chance of success and urgency without referring to a specific kind of organ. This type of results allows comparing current allocation rules and public preferences. These results could help decision makers to take into account public preferences developing organ-specific guidelines. A stronger involvement of citizens in decision making could gain confidence in transplantation medicine, increase the willingness to donate and potentially counteract the scarcity of organs and thereby the tragedy of the distributional conflict. Therefore the continuation of this project is advisable.
