Thyroid Hormonal Changes in Brain Death Donors

Abstract

Background: We analyzed thyroid hormone values in brain death patients to determine the need for thyroid hormone replacement therapy.

Methods: We analyzed 111 brain death donors (77 males and 34 females, mean age, 41.1 years (range; 8 months?72 years) in Ajou University Hospital from 2000 to 2010.

Results: The mean values of thyroid hormones were T3; 72.5 ng/dl (normal range [NR] 60-181 ng/dl), T4; 5.0 ?g/dl (NR 4.5?10.9 ?g/dl), free T4 1.0 ng/dl (NR 0.8-1.5 ng/dl), and TSH 1.5 ?IU/ml (NR 0.35?5.5 ?IU/ml), respectively. However, the values of T4 (correlation coefficient ?0.264, p = 0.005), free T4 (correlation coefficient ?0.305, p = 0.001) and TSH (correlation ?0.206, p = 0.031) significantly decreased based on the increase of interval from the brain death-inducing event to the evaluation time (hereafter, interval). The patients with greater than 8 days of interval (N = 30) showed significantly low thyroid hormone values compared to patients with less than 8 days of interval (N = 81); T3 (70.3 ng/dl vs. 77.0 ng/dl, p = 0.242), T4 (4.7 ng/dl vs. 5.3 ng/dl, p = 0.015), free T4 (0.8 ng/dl vs. 1.2 ng/dl, p = 0.006) and TSH (1.0 ?IU/ml vs. 2.0 ?IU/ml, p = 0.000), respectively.

Conclusions: As the intervals from the brain death-inducing events increased, all thyroid hormone values of brain death donors except T3 significantly decreased. Therefore, we recommend that careful consideration should be given to the interval from brain death-inducing event for the evaluation of thyroid hormone status of brain death patients.