The brain stem death is associated with hemodynamic, endocrine and metabolic disturbances which lead to multiorgan failure and, eventually, to circulatory arrest [1,8,17]. Early graft dysfunction caused by acute tubular necrosis is usually due to ischemia of donor kidneys in the period before harvesting. Hypothyroidism reduces intracellular energy stores and increases anaerobic metabolism and some authors advocated administration of triiodothyronine (D) in order to improve donor's cardiovascular status [11]. In this study we evaluated the thyroid function in 20 brain-dead donors and tried to correlate the biochemical changes in thyroid hormones with hemodynamic stability of these patients and renal allograft function after transplantation.

Keywords: Thyroid function, Organ donors