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Resources for Medical Examiners & Coroners
LifeSource is committed to the recovery of all transplantable organs and tissues while working closely with you to ensure that we are meeting your medical legal responsibilities. Tissue and eye donation may be an opportunity for non-hospital deaths being investigated by your office.
Referring to LifeSource
1.800.24.SHARE | 1.800.247.4273
Tissue and eye donation is an option for those who have not tested positive for HIV or hepatitis, and whose time of death or last seen alive time is under 12 hours from the time of the referral call.
When making a donor referral, please provide the following:
- Deceased’s name, date of birth, height and weight
- Time of death and/or last time seen alive
- Circumstances surrounding the death and EMS involvement
- Medical history
- Will there be an autopsy? If so, when and where?
- Next of kin name and phone numbers
- Funeral home
A LifeSource coordinator will approach the family about donation and will coordinate the recovery with the pathologist and the funeral home. We hope the resources below will be of help as you support the donor’s family. If there is anything we can do for you, please don’t hesitate to contact Melinda by phone at 1-888-5-DONATE.
Resources
We are happy to provide several resource documents and reports to help you successfully complete your work when the gifts of organ and tissue donation are being given.
With every organ donor we provide a post-operative organ recovery report.
- The post-operative organ recovery report is a detailed account of the organs recovered, surgical notes from recovery and plans for tissue and eye recovery options.
- We collect this high level of detail to ensure the health of the organs and tissues recovered for transplant and to assist you in your investigation.
With every tissue donor where autopsy will follow recovery, we provide a pre-autopsy tissue donor information form. This important form provides documentation of injury, detailed heart recovery information and a copy of the donor’s physical assessment.
In addition to these reports, we also provide pre-recovery photos for both organ and tissue donors, blood samples for toxicology and a cardiac pathology report when the heart is recovered for valves. The donor’s detailed medical and social history can also be made available to you upon request to enhance your investigation.
The medical examiner and coroner community plays a key role in the organ and tissue procurement process for transplantation. Read NAME’s position paper on the Medical Examiner Release of Organs and Tissues for Transplantation.
Have Questions?
For more information or to see a sample of the post-operative report or the pre-autopsy tissue donor information form, please contact our support liaison:
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Melinda Van Waus Read Bio