Abstract
Since April 1987, we have visited a number of emergency hospitals in the neighborhood in our capacities as transplant coordinators with the purpose of obtaining many more cadaveric donations for kidney transplantation. The numbers of visits made for this purpose were 185 to 3 emergency medical facilities, 52 to 2 municipal hospitals, and 126 to 8 private hospitals, during the 29 months from April 1987 to August 1989. Our goal was to educate as much of the medical staff of the emergency hospital as possible to understand the present state of cadaveric kidney transplantation in Japan, and requested that they inform us of potential donors with brain death. The practical result from a total of 363 visits over the 29 months, was that we were informed of 31 potential donors, and 25 donations for kidney transplantation were actually made. And 27 of the 31 of which we were informed and 23 of the 25 donors were from 3 emergency medical facilities. As a result of our work as transplant coordinators for more than two years, it seems to us that the staffs of municipal and private hospitals should be more positively enlightened about the cooperative aspects of donations for kidney transplantation.
