Transport of Human Organs in Italy: Location, Time, and Performances


== Abstract ==

   Introduction  The outcome of transplantation activities depends on a variety of unpredictable factors. Up-to-date criteria on organ allocation foresee an efficient transport chain along with compliant performance parameters.    Methods and Objectives  The Centro Nazionale Trapianti and the Department of Civil, Chemical, Environmental, and Materials Engineering of the University of Bologna (respectively, CNT and DICAM) have been updating a national database of organ transplantation activities to investigate performance parameters and the main causes of disruption.    Results  Between June 2015 and July 2016, 617 of 1061 organs have been shipped by air (making for 486 flight events), of which 407 were accompanied by medical equipment. Origin/destination and distance matrixes have been drawn for both road and air transport. Each airport node is ranked based on the n° of organs ingoing/outgoing and each route link on its frequency. Performance parameters such as average speed, distance covered, and time have been computed and compared with each organ's cold ischemia time (CIT). Average distance frontiers are rather homogeneous, but much effort is necessary to reduce the number of events performed with approximately 90% or more of CIT spent.    Conclusions  The monitoring of organ transplantation activities' performance is a standalone action within Europe to support strategic policies to optimize the system. Thus, a clearer awareness on performances and issues related to organ transport has been made possible: analyses show that the higher uncertainty associated with total time of displacement by air is due to the steps which take place by road (length and paths must be optimized) and lung transports generally perform weaker than heart transports due to longer average distances travelled and smaller average speeds, often resulting in a total displacement time greater than 90% of CIT.


== Original document ==

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

* [http://hdl.handle.net/11585/586974 http://hdl.handle.net/11585/586974]

* [https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0041134517301689?httpAccept=text/plain https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0041134517301689?httpAccept=text/plain],
: [https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0041134517301689?httpAccept=text/xml https://api.elsevier.com/content/article/PII:S0041134517301689?httpAccept=text/xml],
: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2017.02.033 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2017.02.033] under the license https://www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/

* [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041134517301689 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0041134517301689],
: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28457359 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28457359],
: [https://moh-it.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/transport-of-human-organs-in-italy-location-time-and-performances https://moh-it.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/transport-of-human-organs-in-italy-location-time-and-performances],
: [https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2609062181 https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2609062181]