Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Organ Donation and Transplants at Hospital de Base and in the State of São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic had severe impacts on various sectors of society, especially in the area of medicine. In this area, one segment of activity that was greatly impacted was transplantation, which at first had to be halted in numerous centers, for various reasons. The objective of this article was to analyze, in a comparative way between the years 2019 and 2020, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the numbers of transplantations in a district hospital (DH), a national reference in transplantations, and in the state of São Paulo, as well as in the number of donations from these locations. The method used in this work was the comparative analysis using data obtained from the Brazilian Transplant Registry, the Brazilian Association of Organ Transplantation and the State Transplant System. The following organs were analyzed in the DH and in the state of São Paulo: heart, liver, lung and kidney. Pancreas was analyzed only in the state. Through the analyses, it was observed that in the DH there was a decrease in the numbers of transplantations for all organs analyzed, and in the state of São Paulo, in the numbers of lung and kidney transplantations, maintaining the number of pancreas transplantations and increasing the numbers of heart and liver transplantations. Regarding donors, there was a decrease in the number of potential donors, but an increase in the number of actual donors, due to a decrease in the family refusal rate.