A study of organ transplantation network for pediatric patients - Organ sharing in pediatric renal transplantation

Nation-wide cadaveric organ sharing for kidney transplantation hac operated in Japan since April 1984, and was reorganized as JNOS (Japanese Network for Organ Sharing) last year for the purpose of stimulating its activity. However, neither regulations nor priorities are given to pediatric patients and donors. As the reflexion of these situation, organ transplantation for the pediatric patients would be placed at a disadvantage in the future. In order to establish new system of pediatric organ sharing which could provide reasonable priorities for pediatric patients, we investigated actual situations of organ procurement and sharing in pediatric transplantation by questionnaires from 9 overseas and 24 domestic organ procurement organization (OPO). Eight of 24 domestic and 6 of 9 international QPO answered that they gave certain priority to pediatric patients, espacially in the case of pediatric donors, According to our experiences at Sakura regional kidney procurment and sharing center from 1974 through March 1995 (at start of new network), 13(6 male and 7 female) patients under the age of 15 were registered as candidates for kidney transplantation and only one pediatric kidney was transplanted to pediatric patient. From these results, we made a proposal on organ sharing of pediatric patients and donors for the future network in our country, as ''pediatric organs should be given to pediatric patients in the first place''.