Is Extracorporeal Support Becoming the New Standard for the Preservation of DCD Grafts?

The use of extended criteria donors is a necessity in the current era, given the fact that organ shortage limits the applicability of transplantation. To this end, not only is the use of living donors justified, but the use of donors following circulatory determination of death (DCD) is also justified, even in countries with high donation rates such as Spain. In the United States in recent years, DCD have come to represent the fastest growing constituent of the donor pool, increasing from approximately 1% of all deceased donors in 1996 to 11% of deceased donors in 2008. In some United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) regions with limited standard criteria donors, DCD comprise up to 16–21% of the total donor pool (1).