Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Jul 20:5:48.
doi: 10.1186/s40560-017-0241-0. eCollection 2017.

Current status of pediatric transplantation in Japan

Nao Nishimura  1 , Mureo Kasahara  2 , Kenji Ishikura  3 , Satoshi Nakagawa  1
Affiliations
Review

Current status of pediatric transplantation in Japan

Nao Nishimura et al. J Intensive Care. .

Abstract

Brain-dead donor organ transplantation has been available to children in Japan since the 2010 revision of the Organ Transplant Law. Of the 50-60 brain-dead donor organ transplants performed annually in Japan, however, very few (0-4 per year) are performed in children. Again, while those receiving liver, heart, and kidney transplants are reported to fare better than their counterparts in the rest of the world, organ shortage is becoming a matter of great concern. Very few organs become available from brain-dead donors or are transplanted to adults if made available at all, with some children dying while on the brain-dead organ waiting list. Against this background, living-donor transplants, split-liver transplants, domino transplants, and hepatocyte transplants represent alternative modalities, each of which is shown to be associated with favorable outcomes. Challenges exist, include streamlining the existing framework for promoting organ donation for children and between children.

Keywords: Brain-dead organ donation; Children; Living-donor organ transplantation; Organ transplantation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Number of pediatric deceased organ donations in Japan by year (<15 years; n = 43)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Number of deceased organ donations in Japan by year
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Number of liver transplants performed in Japan (n = 6097). LDLT living-donor liver transplantation, DDLT deceased-donor liver transplantation
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Number of liver transplants in NCCHD
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Age distribution of heart transplant recipients and mean waiting durations in Japan
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Pediatric candidates traveling overseas for heart transplants (n = 104)
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Number of pediatric deceased-donor kidney transplants performed in Japan
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Japan Organ Transplant Network website. https://www.jotnw.or.jp/datafile/index.html. Accessed 10 Dec 2016.
    1. Japan Organ Transplant Network website. https://www.jotnw.or.jp/datafile/offer/index.html. Accessed 10 Dec 2016.
    1. Japan Organ Transplant Network. https://www.jotnw.or.jp/datafile/offer_brain.html. Accessed 10 Dec 2016.
    1. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. https://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/data/view-data-reports/national-data/. Accessed 10 Dec 2016.
    1. International Registry in Organ Donation and Transplantation. http://www.irodat.org/. Accessed 5 Jan 2017.

LinkOut - more resources