New registry and tracking system for renal transplantation in Japan

Following The Declaration of Istanbul 2008, a registration committees of The Japan Society for Transplantation and The Japanese Society for Clinical Renal Transplantation planned to establish a new registry and tracking system for renal transplant recipients and donors supported by a Health Labor Sciences Research Grant by The Ministry of Health Labour and Welfare. In place of the previous paper-based system, we established the new registry and tracking system, JARTRE (Japan Renal Transplantation Registry), using USB memory in 2009. Recipient and donor data were inputted into the USB memory at the transplantation centers. The memory was reviewed a yearly by committees. The recipient and donor registration included details from both. The tracking is performed centrally 3 months, 1 year, and every year after the operation. The advantages of this system are the ease of input, adequacy of the data, and rapid statistical processing. In 2009, we registered 97.9% of new renal transplantation recipients and donors; in 2008 it was more than 81.9% of all past renal transplantation recipients in Japan.