Abstract
Successful kidney transplantation drastically improves the quality of life of patients with chronic renal failure who undergoes hemodialysis. In our country, a very limited number of kidney transplants are performed: 702 cases (551 living related and 151 cadaveric) were performed in 2001. Ten-year kidney graft survival is now more than 50%, which can save millions of yen per patient in medical costs compared to the cost of haemodialysis therapy with the overall result of several billions of yen in saving.
From an economical point of view, it is important to increase the number of kidney transplants, especially cadaveric kidney transplantation, because the case number of living donors are limited in our country. A donor action protocol for our society to promote organ donation may be the only way to solve this issue. The renal disease network of Japanese national hospitals is one suitable system to implement a donor action protocol.
