Background:

In October 2016, television stations began a campaign to increase organ donation rates. During the months that followed, a sustained increase in donation rate was observed, reaching 10 per million people. Health authorities considered that this increase was a consequence of an improvement in the search and maintenance of potential donors and TV executives considered that is was due to a reduction in organ donation refusal by relatives of potential donors.

Aim:

To analyze the year after the TV campaign and determine its relative effect in the improvement of effective organ donation for transplantation.

Material and Methods:

Monthly figures of donors published on the websites of the National Transplant Corporation and the Ministry of Health and the historical figures for the 2013-2016 period were analyzed. Using this information, the expected behavior was modeled for the number of expected donors for the year 2017 and expected family refusal rates.

Results:

We found that the number of effective donors for 2017 did not differ substantially from the estimation and that the apparent substantial increase in the rate of organ donation was due to a marked but transitory reduction in the rate of donation refusal by relatives of potential donors.

Conclusions:

The whole process leading to effective donation should we reanalyzed. New strategies, such as information technologies should be incorporated to improve the detection and management of potential donors. The TV campaign, although successful, was very expensive and very difficult to sustain over time.