Regional ethics of surgeon resuscitation for organ transplantation after lethal injury.

Abstract

Trauma patients may present with nonsurvivable injuries, which could be resuscitated for future organ transplantation. Trauma surgeons face an ethical dilemma of deciding whether, when, and how to resuscitate a patient who will not directly benefit from it. As there are no established guidelines to follow, we aim to describe resuscitation practices for organ transplantation; we hypothesize that resuscitation practices vary regionally.