Community Input on NRP: Establishing Ethical Guidelines for Normothermic Regional Perfusion Through Community and Professional Engagement

Normothermic Regional Perfusion remains an ethically controversial approach to organ procurement. In response to an organizational request, we convened a Community and Professional Task Group to provide guidance on the ethical elements of this process to inform potentially forthcoming policy and practice guidelines. In this paper, we share the mechanism of forming the Community and Professional Task Group within our broader ethics consultation system, the process of information gathering, as well as the guidance that was delivered to the organization. This includes the identification of and steps for addressing the ethical issues that continue to mark NRP as an ethically complex approach to organ procurement, including those around the Uniform Determination of Death Act, the Dead Donor Rule, and public perception of and trust in deceased organ donation.