Background: In the DGFG network, about 250 donations of cardiovascular tissue are realized annually. The majority (about 80%) is performed in the context of multi-organ donations (MOD) – directly following organ removal in the operation room or the following day. Due to the very low and at the same time still decreasing numbers in organ donation in Germany, for some years, there has also been a program to donate heart valves and blood vessels from non-heart-beating donors – donation after circulatory death (DCD). In these donations, the time between circulatory arrest and tissue procurement is with 24-36 hours usually longer than a removal during MOD. Therefore, the question arises whether tissue that is retrieved and subsequently processed only after a longer time interval after circulatory arrest has an altered quality compared with those from MOD.

Method: Retrospective data from 2019 to 2022 are evaluated in terms of donation type, time to procurement, donor criteria, and discard rates due to microbial abnormalities and other reasons. A total of 957 donations are considered, including 744 tissue collections realized in MOD and 131 donations after cardiac arrest.

Results: The analysis does not reveal any abnormalities between the two donation types with regard to microbial contamination. As expected, the discard due to arteriosclerotic changes correlates with the age of the donor. Other negative deviations cannot be detected so far.

Conclusion: The available data do not indicate a negative impact of the extended procurement time interval for donations after cardiac arrest. Therefore, the development of this donation type will be further pursued. Nevertheless, it is desirable to keep the period between cardiac arrest and procurement as well as processing of the tissue as short as possible. Future studies should clarify whether there might be further influences of the donation type on the tissue quality.