Paediatric donation after cardiac death (DCD) liver transplantation

The experience in the use of DCD organs for liver transplant has been predominantly from the controlled DCD categories of III and IV [9]. Prior to the definition of brainstem death, DCD was the only source of organs for the pioneering programmes in liver transplantation [10,11]. In hindsight, those early donors were highly selected and belonged to DCD controlled Maastricht category IV, that is, brainstem dead.