Initial Report of the Korean Organ Transplant Registry: The First Report of National Kidney Transplantation Data

Purpose. A national organ transplant registry is an indispensable organizational requirement for patient care, research, and planning. Even though the Korean Network for Organ Sharing (KONOS) has established a database for a waiting list, organ allocation, and incidence of organ transplantation since 2000, an integrated registry including post-transplantation data is needed for better understanding of organ transplantation. Recently, the Korean Society for Transplantation (KST) and the Korean Center for Disease Control (KCDC) designed a web-based organ transplant registry, named the Korean Organ Transplant Registry (KOTRY). As an initial project of KOTRY, we retrospectively analyzed kidney transplantations (KTs) performed in 2009 and 2010. Methods. A total of 2292 KTs (91.9%) from 46 hospitals (80.7%) were collected and analyzed. Ninety-five elements related to KT were selected and analyzed. Results. Proportions of male recipients and retransplantations were 58.4% and 7.1%, respectively. Even though glomerulonephritis was the most common cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) (28.4%), the number of diabetic nephropathy cases was increasing. The living donor (LD) to deceased donor (DD) ratio was 1.69:1. Because of a serious organ shortage in Korea, DD kidneys with a low initial estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGER) of <45 mL/min/1.73 m(2) (21.2%) and expanded criteria donors (ECDs; 18.3%) are frequently used. Other noticeable findings are the increasing number of wife donors and ABO-incompatible (ABOi) transplants for O+ recipients. Conclusions. The epidemiological profile of transplantation is different from country to country. The number of organ transplantations in East Asian countries is rapidly growing, however, there are few epidemiological data about this region in the literature. With the establishment of KOTRY, it was possible to present the first nationwide epidemiological data of Korean KTs.