Therapeutic Hypothermia in Deceased Organ Donors and Kidney-Graft Function.

To the Editor: In the July 30 issue of the Journal, Niemann and colleagues published their investigation on therapeutic hypothermia in deceased organ donors and kidney-graft function.1 The investigation was initiated on March 20, 2012, and registered with ClinicalTrials.gov 5 months later (August 21, 2012). According to the registration (NCT01680744), the primary outcome measure was the change in renal function (as determined by levels of creatinine and cystatin C) between neurologic death and organ recovery in donors randomly assigned to normothermia or hypothermia. No secondary outcome measures were stipulated. When Niemann et al. report the results of their investigation, the primary outcome has been changed to delayed graft function in the kidney recipients. This change resulted in a positive outcome of the authors’ intervention. We believe that the results of this investigation should be taken to suggest only a hypothesis rather than to provide evidence for a benefit of induced donor hypothermia in kidney transplantation. Preben G. Berthelsen, M.D.

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[6]  C. Niemann,et al.  Deceased Organ Donor Research: The Last Research Frontier? , 2013, Liver transplantation : official publication of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society.

[7]  Nathaniel Knox Cartwright,et al.  Machine perfusion or cold storage in deceased-donor kidney transplantation. , 2009, The New England journal of medicine.