A national conference on organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) was convened to expand the practice of DCD in the continuum of quality end-of-life care.This national conference affirmed the ethical propriety of DCD as not violating the dead donor rule. Further, by new developments not previously reported, the conference resolved controversy regarding the period of circulatory cessation that determines death and allows administration of pre-recovery pharmacologic agents, it established conditions of DCD eligibility, it presented current data regarding the successful transplantation of organs from DCD, it proposed a new framework of data reporting regarding ischemic events, it made specific recommendations to agencies and organizations to remove barriers to DCD, it brought guidance regarding organ allocation and the process of informed consent and it set an action plan to address media issues. When a consensual decision is made to withdraw life support by the attending physician and patient or by the attending physician and a family member or surrogate (particularly in an intensive care unit), a routine opportunity for DCD should be available to honor the deceased donor's wishes in every donor service area (DSA) of the United States. Key words: Deceased organ donation Received 25 July 2005, revised and accepted for publication 24 October 2005A national conference on organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) was convened in Philadelphia on April 7 and 8, 2005, to address the increasing experience of DCD and to affirm the ethical propriety of transplanting organs from such donors. Participants represented the broad spectrum of the medical community, including neuroscientists, critical care professionals and distinguished bioethicists (Appendix 1).Six work groups were assembled to address specific DCD issues and fulfill the conference objectives: (i) determining death by a cardiopulmonary criterion, (ii) assessing medical criteria that predict DCD candidacy following the withdrawal of life support, (iii) reviewing protocols for successful DCD organ recovery and subsequent transplantation, (iv) initiating DCD in donation service areas (DSAs), (v) discussing the allocation of DCD organs for transplantation and (vi) examining perceptions of DCD held by the media and the public. Work Group 1: Determining Death by a Cardiopulmonary CriterionA prospective organ donor's death may be determined by either cardiopulmonary (DCD) or neurologic criteria (donation after brain death [DBD]) (1). The term donation after cardiac death (DCD) clearly indicates that death precedes donation. Death determination in the DCD patient mandates the use of a cardiopulmonary criterion to prove the absence of circulation. The cardiopulmonary criterion may be used when the donor does not fulfill brain death criteria. The ethical axiom of organ donation necessitates adherence to the dead donor rule: the retrieval of organs for transplantation should not cause the death of a donor (2).In clinical situations that fulfill either brain death criteria ...

For critically ill patients and their loved ones, high-quality health care includes the provision of excellent palliative care. To achieve this goal, the healthcare system needs to identify, measure, and report specific targets for quality palliative care for critically ill or injured patients. Our objective was to use a consensus process to develop a preliminary set of quality measures to assess palliative care in the critically ill. We built on earlier and ongoing efforts of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Critical Care End-of-Life Peer Workgroup to propose specific measures of the structure and process of palliative care. We used an informal iterative consensus process to identify and refine a set of candidate quality measures. These candidate measures were developed by reviewing previous literature reviews, supplementing the evidence base with recently published systematic reviews and consensus statements, identifying existing indicators and measures, and adapting indicators from related fields for our objective. Among our primary sources, we identified existing measures from the Voluntary Hospital Association's Transformation of the ICU program and a government-sponsored systematic review performed by RAND Health to identify palliative care quality measures for cancer care. Our consensus group proposes 18 quality measures to assess the quality of palliative care for the critically ill and injured. A total of 14 of the proposed measures assess processes of care at the patient level, and four measures explore structural aspects of critical care delivery. Future research is needed to assess the relationship of these measures to desired health outcomes. Subsequent measure sets should also attempt to include outcome measures, such as patient or surrogate satisfaction, as the field develops the means to rigorously measure such outcomes. The proposed measures are intended to stimulate further discussion, testing, and refinement for quality of care measurement and enhancement.