Changing pattern of death cause and future source of organs in Korea

Won H Cho^1,2, Ui J Park¹, Hyeung T Kim^1,2, Jin S Yu²

¹Department of Surgery, Division of Transplantation, Keimyung University School of Medicine, Daegu, Korea, ²Vitallink Korea, Seoul, Korea

Required reporting system included in newly revised transplantation law increase deceased donor about 20% in recent 2 years. However, nobody can believe this amount of growth in the next year because we already sense a slowing of growth this year. In order to have a prospective possibility of organ donation from deceased donor, national statistics about changing pattern of death cause were reviewed. The Korea Network of Organ Sharing(KONOS) reported that number of living donor transplantation is decreasing from 53.3% in 2008 to 50.9% in 2012. Instead, proportion of deceased donor is increased from 35.3% to 45.7%.{figure1}

Among these deceased donor, two most frequent cause of brain death were cerebrovascular disease and head trauma by traffic or other accident, which comprised 81.0%. But real problem in recent year is the changing pattern of death cause which reported by the Statistics Korea(national statistics). The death rate of cerebrovascular disease and head trauma are decreasing definitely and their reducing rate in 2012 are 31.2% and 39.6% compare to 2001.{figure2} Even we don't use all of the potential donor that developed at hospital right now, we easily expect the donor from deceased donor will be soon flat or decreasing. To solve this problem, we actively change our policy to use non-heart beating donor and aggressively use expanded criteria donor which were discarded previously. National consensus about changing the law for removing the life supporting system is also seriously considered.

Figure 1

Figure 2