Motorcycle rallies associated with a bump in organs for transplant

Major motorcycle rallies, or “Bike Weeks,” in the U.S. are associated with increased incidence of both organ donation and transplants. A study investigating whether there were changes in the rates of motor vehicle trauma-related organ donation and transplant in the four weeks before and after seven major U.S. motorcycle rallies was published in JAMA Internal Medicine. The researchers hypothesized that motor vehicle trauma-associated organ donation and transplant rates would increase during the times motorcycle rallies occurred in their associated regions. Researchers also compared the data to that from regions where Bike Weeks did not occur. “Motorcyclists are disproportionately more likely to die in a crash compared with passenger vehicle motorists, and unhelmeted motorcyclists are 3 times as likely to become organ donors when involved in fatal crashes,” the researchers wrote. They identified the seven largest annual motorcycle rallies from 2005 to 2021, each of which had 200,000 to 500,000 attendees. The rallies occurred in various states and times of the year. The primary outcome measures of the study were the number of distinct organ donors per day and transplant recipients per day per Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) region. Overall, data on 10,798 organ donors aged 16 years or older and 35,329 transplant recipients were analyzed (5,128 heart, 2,749 lung, 8916 liver, 17,201 kidney, 614 pancreas, 1951 kidney-pancreas, and 104 intestinal transplant recipients). During the rally dates, there were 406 organ donors and 1,400 transplant recipients (34.8% female; 65.2% male). During the surrounding weeks, there were 2,332 organ donors and 7,714 transplant recipients. There were more organ donors and more transplanted organs in rally regions during the rally dates than there were during the surrounding four weeks in the same regions, the study said. Regions with a motorcycle rally saw an increase of 21% more organ donors per day during rally dates compared to the four weeks before and after the rally. Across nine days (the mean duration of the rallies), this reflected 0.7 additional organ donors for a typical rally. “These findings are not surprising given the high mortality associated with motorcycle accidents. From this tragedy, organ donation offers the opportunity to save lives," noted an accompanying commentary.

Motorcycle rallies associated with a bump in organs for transplant

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