Post-mortem tissue donation at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Hamburg: talking to the next of kin guidelines and first experiences.

While building up a tissue donation program at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Hamburg we had to organize the contact to the deceased's close relatives and to develop guidelines for an appropriate approach. Loosing a family member may cause intense psychological reactions as an Acute Stress Disorder (ICD-10F43.0). An "Informed Consent", according to the German Tissue Law, requires a good emotional contact, enough time and a detailed discussion on donation between the tissue coordinator and the contacted next of kin. A reliable decision for tissue donation can activate the coping strategies of the deceased s family.

[Development of a modified bypass system for bridging the anhepatic phase in orthotopic liver transplantation]. / Entwicklung eines modifizierten Bypass-Systems zur Uberbrückung der anhepatischen Phase bei orthotoper Lebertransplantation.

The tube-system of the biopump equipment (Bio-medicus, Minnesota/USA) is an essential part of the veno-venous bypass during liver-grafting. In this system turbulences of the blood flow have be avoided because of the unability of heparinization. Any conjunctions parts of the system are areas of potential flow-changes. The number of junctions in the tube-system increase the risk of blood clotting with consecutive intraoperative complications by embolisms. This paper describes a new tube-system with integrated lines for pressure measurements in order to minimize these problems.