In the case of acute brain injury, decision-making uncertainties can arise when both an advance decision to refuse treatment and a prior consent to post-mortem organ donation are present. It is yet unknown how the persons concerned view this potential conflict. The present study aims to investigate how frequent this situation is, whether the persons concerned are aware of the potential conflict and what they would prioritize.
Semi-quantitative cross-sectional survey of senior citizens of a metropolitan region in Germany using a literature-based questionnaire.
A total of 236 senior citizens participated in the survey, amounting to 52% of those invited. While 54% of the participants reported to have written advance directives, 46% had expressed their consent to post-mortem organ donation in written or oral form. Altogether, 29% of all participants had issued both types of written documents. The consent to organ donation correlated significantly with the presence of an advance directive. Only 47% of the advance directives contained, according to their authors, statements about organ donation. Dying outside of intensive care was the priority for 51%, while 17% favored donating their organs. About half of the participants accepted transient intensive care measures in the case of presumed or expected brain death, but only a fourth also accepted cardiopulmonary resuscitation in those situations. Knowledge about brain death was scant and the attitudes towards it were rather critical.
The coincidence of advance directives and organ donation consent is not uncommon in senior citizens and could contribute to low organ donation rates. The heterogeneous attitudes of the surveyed persons as well as their poor knowledge about brain death and the potential conflict studied here underscore the necessity of a high-quality advance care planning process.