Use of drug intoxicated donors for lung transplant: Impact on survival outcomes

Introduction The number of increasing deaths due to the opioid epidemic has led to a potential greater supply of organ donors. There is hesitancy to use drug intoxicated donors, and we evaluated their impact on post‐transplant survival. Background Patients ≥18 years of age undergoing lung transplantation and donors from whom at least one organ was donated between January 2005 and March 2015 were selected from the United Network of Organ Sharing database. Baseline characteristics and post‐transplant survival were compared between drug intoxicated and all other donors. Results The utilization of drug intoxicated donors increased from 1.86% in 2005 to 6.23% in 2014. The 2 study groups had similar characteristics including age, gender, and Lung Allocation Score. As compared to all other donors, drug intoxicated donors were younger (29.1 ± 9.4 vs 34.6 ± 13.4 years, P