Organ donations from some donors in the UK have been stopped temporarily while a full investigation takes place into whether organs were removed from patients without their consent.

BBC News reports that 800,000 people on the UK organ donor register may have had their preferences about which organs they wished to donate recorded incorrectly.

NHS Blood and Transplant said that the move affected people in Scotland, England and Wales who had registered as organ donors using their driving licence application form.

There are currently around 17 million registered organ donors – some give consent for all their organs to be used for transplant after their death, but others withhold consent for certain organs, such as eyes.

In the last 10 years, however, a ‘technical error’ has led to the incorrect recording of some donors’ preferences, meaning that some organs might have been donated without the donor’s consent.

The error was uncovered in 2009 after NHS Blood and Transplant began to write to donors on the register asking them to confirm their preferences.

The British Medical Association has said that the error could affect public confidence in the organ donor register.

Health Secretary Andy Burnham said he regretted the error but it should not ‘stop people from donating’.

Mr Burnham said that an independent review – to be led by Professor Sir Gordon Duff of Sheffield University – would be commissioned to find out how the data on donors’ driving licences had come to be recorded incorrectly.

The NHS transplant authority has already confirmed 21 cases in which the wrong organs may have been taken from donors.

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