Organ donation, transplant rates increase during motorcycle rallies
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An analysis by Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers shows steep increases in organ donations and transplantations take place during large motorcycle rallies.
The research, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that in the regions where the seven largest motorcycle rallies were held throughout the United States between 2005 and 2021, there were 21% more organ donors per day, on average, and 26% more transplant recipients per day, on average, during these events, compared with days just before and after the rallies, according to a press release.
“In this cross-sectional study, major motorcycle rallies in the U.S. were associated with increased incidence of organ donation and transplants,” David C. Cron, MD, MS, Harvard Medical School clinical fellow in surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues wrote in their study. “While safety measures to minimize morbidity and mortality during motorcycle rallies should be prioritized, this study showed the downstream association of these events with organ donation and transplants.”
Records from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients of 10,798 organ donors and 35,329 recipients in the regions where the featured motorcycle rallies take place were reviewed, according to the press release. During the days on which rallies were held, there were 406 organ donors and 1,400 transplant recipients in regions near the events. During the 4 weeks before and after the rallies, there were 2,332 organ donors and 7,714 transplant recipients in those locations.
To rule out the influence of other factors not related to bike rallies, the researchers compared figures from the rally locations with other regions not affected by the rallies and then looked at trends in the rally regions at other times of the year, according to the release.
The seven motorcycle rallies in the study each draw more than 200,000 visitors during the course of several days. Daytona Bike Week in Florida and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota are 10-day events that each draw 500,000 visitors, according to the release.
Traumatic injuries
Driving a motorcycle brings a higher risk of death compared with individuals driving in motor vehicles, the researcher wrote, and “unhelmeted motorcyclists are three times as likely to become organ donors when involved in fatal crashes.
“In states where motorcycle helmets were previously required by law, helmet law repeal was associated with greater motor vehicle crash-related deceased organ donation,” Cron and colleagues wrote.
Cron told Healio the review looked at increases in donation and transplant events during the rallies, as opposed to after the events were completed. The spike in organ donors “must be due to the concentration of large numbers (as much as 500,000) of motorcyclists in one area,” Cron said. “When we looked at immediately surrounding regions (as opposed to the more distant control regions), we did see evidence of a small displacement effect, where there were 10% fewer deaths in surrounding areas during motorcycle rallies, suggesting that some but not all of the deaths may have been deaths that might have happened anyway due to the inherent risks motorcycle riding, but those deaths happened near the rallies instead.”
Avoidable deaths
“The spikes in organ donations and transplantations that we found in our analysis are disturbing, even if not entirely surprising, because they signal a systemic failure to avoid preventable deaths, which is a tragedy,” Cron said in the release. “There is a clear need for better safety protocols around such events.
“At the same time, it is important for transplant communities in places where these events are held to be aware of the potential for increased organ donors during those periods. Organ donation is often called the gift of life, and we should make sure that we do not squander it and can turn any of these tragic deaths into a chance to potentially save other lives,” Cron, who is also a research fellow at the Center for Surgery and Public Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said.
The Center of Surgery and Public Health includes a research group interested in understanding how policy decisions and other factors, both inside and outside of the health care system, affect efforts to improve the supply of organs for transplantation.
References:
- Cron D, et al. JAMA Int. Med. 2022;doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2022.5431.
- Organ donations, transplants increase on days of largest motorcycle rallies. https://hms.harvard.edu/news/organ-donations-transplants-increase-days-largest-motorcycle-rallies. Published Nov. 28, 2022. Accessed Nov. 30, 2022.
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