Eurotransplant Annual Meeting 2015
Presidential symposium
Chair: B. Meiser
Speakers: J. Neuberger, F. Mühlbacher
Report by: M. de Beer
The presidential symposium was opened by Prof. Meiser, President of the Eurotransplant International Board, who
announced that the first speaker in the program, Dr. Muller from South Africa, could not make it to Leiden in time due to a
flight delay. Her presentation had been rescheduled to the OPC/Ethics meeting on Friday morning.
Should outcome influence the practice of transplantation?
The first presentation “Should outcome influence the practice of
transplantation?” was given by Prof. Neuberger of NHSBT in Bristol,
United Kingdom. Solid organ transplantation saves and improves lives,
but the imbalance between the number of people needing a transplant
and the number of organs from deceased donors, means that these lifesaving organs must be rationed. Prof. Neuberger stressed that to retain
public confidence and provide a legal and ethical framework, selection
and allocation schemes must be transparent.
In his presentation, he showed that it is important to clearly define the aims of the allocation schemes which means
balancing the conflicting requirements of need (reducing mortality on the list), benefit (allocating an organ where the gain
is survival is greatest), utility (allocating the organ to the patient with the greatest gain), equity (where everyone has the
same chance of death/survival) or other. Furthermore, he said that the aims for a kidney allocation scheme may be different
from, say, a heart allocation scheme. Such schemes rarely take into account quality of life gained.
It is clearly important to measure and publish outcomes from transplantation, but he said grea