The 84 donors in 2017 were the most ever recorded in a single year in Alberta, and a large part of the increase is related to a new procedure that started being performed in Calgary only two years ago.
Known as donation after cardio-circulatory death, or DCD for short, it sees doctors procure organs from consenting patients five minutes after the heart stops.
This expands the pool of potential donors. It also contrasts with the recent past, when donations primarily came from patients who had suffered severe head injuries and had already been declared brain dead.
Read the full story here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-organ-donations-dcd-ndd-2017-numbers-1.4779483
Story Credit: Robson Fletcher, 2018, CBC News