Table 2.

Summary of the characteristics of donation after brainstem death and donation after circulatory death

	Donation after brainstem death	Donation after circulatory death
Donation cohort	Patients that fulfil the criteria for brainstem death but maintain cardiac output	Donors who have died or are awaiting cardiac death
Proportion of donors	≈ 65%	≈ 35%
Warm ischaemic time	Minimal, due to maintenance of cardiac output	Usually prolonged, due to the interval after asystole where organs are not perfused and have not yet been cooled
Pathophysiological insult	Brainstem death results in systemic cytokine and cathecholamine release associated with haemodynamic instability and graft insult	Prolonged warm ischaemia stimulates the activation of innate and adaptive immune responses, generation of reactive oxygen species and induction of apoptosis
Graft outcomes	Current data suggest that careful selection of DCD candidates confers a long-term graft outcome that is comparable to DBD donors [60, 112]