Long-term graft outcome analyzed from a national registry point of view

It has been 10 years since the "Taiwan Organ Registry and Sharing Center" (TORSC) was founded by the Department of Health in June 2002. The mission of TORSC is to build a fair organ sharing and registration network and also a national database collection and analysis mechanism. TORSC is also dedicated to improving the organ donation rate and shortening the waiting times for patients to improve the effective usage of donated organs. The first organ was formally allocated on April 1, 2005. In this article, we will present the initial 8-year results of this allocation system focusing on kidneys. From the first organ shared on April 1, 2005 to March 31, 2013, there were 1502 donors allocated by TORSC. There were 1063 males and 439 females, with a mean age for males of 42.41 and for females of 41.99. Total organs they donated were hearts 642, livers 688, kidneys 1626, lungs 50, pancreas 88, and cornea 1973. The overall nation-wide 3-year survival rate of kidney recipients was 93.72% for patients and 83.08% for kidney grafts. In comparison, the 3-year graft survival rate presented in the 2008 Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network/Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (OPTN/SRTR) annual report was 82.4% for kidney. According to our data, graft survival is not inferior to OPTN/SRTR, although the patient numbers are not comparable.