[Kim Jae-ho's Life Story] <250> Will Organ Transplants Protect Our Lives Well?

When organs are severely damaged and can no longer function properly, can organ transplantation?replacing the organs of terminal patients, which are difficult to recover with existing treatments, with healthy organs donated from brain-dead or living donors?save the precious lives of those who would otherwise die?

The first successful kidney transplant was performed in the United States in 1954. In Korea, following the first successful corneal transplant in 1966, a kidney transplant surgery was successfully performed in 1969 on a patient suffering from chronic renal failure. Since then, transplantation technology has rapidly advanced to include not only kidneys, liver, pancreas, lungs, and small intestines but also tissues such as corneas, bone marrow, bones, and blood vessels. Today, Korea’s organ transplantation surgeries demonstrate world-class standards.

In particular, liver transplantation, known as one of the most challenging organ transplant surgeries, has shown the highest number of successful cases. Despite the higher difficulty of living-donor liver transplants compared to brain-dead donor liver transplants, Korea has achieved high success rates, excellent post-transplant survival rates, and world-class achievements such as two-donor liver transplants. As a result, many medical professionals from overseas visit Korea every year to learn living-donor liver transplant techniques.

So, can we simply rely on the advancement of transplantation technology and solve everything by just preparing money and going to the hospital when the need for a transplant arises? Not quite. Although transplantation technology has advanced remarkably and continues to improve, there are still challenges to be addressed in organ transplantation. Without solving these challenges, it is difficult to fully benefit from the advancements in transplantation technology.

For organ transplantation to yield successful outcomes, first, there must be organs donated to those in need; second, the transplantation must be successful; and third, the transplanted organ should function for a long time after transplantation, ideally for the recipient’s lifetime. How satisfactory is today’s organ transplantation in these three aspects?

First, the supply and demand situation for transplant organs shows a severe imbalance. There are many patients who need transplants, but the number of organ donors is far too insufficient. As a result, more people die waiting for organs than those who receive transplants and have their problems resolved.

According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, at the end of 2021, there were 41,334 people on the organ transplant waiting list, but only 442 brain-dead organ donors were available during the year, resulting in 1,478 organ transplants. By organ, kidney transplants were the most common at 747 cases, followed by liver 357, heart 168, lung 167, pancreas 37, and small intestine 1. During the year, 2,480 people died while waiting for a transplant, which means about 6.8 people died daily while on the waiting list.

Second, in terms of transplant success rates, as the number of transplant cases has increased, success rates have steadily improved. Currently, many hospitals in Korea show high success rates above 90%, and continuous efforts are being made to improve these rates further, so they are expected to improve even more in the future.

Third, the performance of the transplanted organ can be judged by the post-transplant survival period. A report from a medical center at a university in the United States, which used the concept of “transplant half-life” to measure the median survival time of transplant recipients, provides a useful reference. For example, if the transplant half-life of an organ is 10 years, it means half of the recipients live longer than 10 years, and the other half live less than 10 years.

According to this report, the transplant half-life for kidneys was 10-13 years, with the longest survivor living 60 years; for pancreas, the half-life was 11 years, with the longest survivor living 24 years; for liver, 75% survived more than 5 years, with the longest survivor living 40 years; for heart, the half-life was 12.5 years, with the longest survivor living 29 years and 5 months; for lungs, the half-life was 7.8 years for those who received both lungs, 4.8 years for those who received only one lung, and the longest survivor lived 14 years and 10 months.

To protect the lives of people whose organs are severely damaged by various diseases and difficult to recover, the three challenges mentioned above must be addressed. The second challenge, transplant success rate, is currently at a high level and is expected to improve further. However, the first challenge, the imbalance in the supply and demand of transplant organs, and the third challenge, the healthy use of transplanted organs, require special efforts and are difficult tasks.

First, to resolve the imbalance in the supply and demand of transplant organs, more citizens need to participate in organ donation. Since this is difficult in the short term, the best approach is to prevent the need for organ transplantation by maintaining healthy lifestyle habits to avoid such situations in advance.

Additionally, to extend the survival period after receiving an organ transplant, special efforts are needed to improve poor lifestyle habits after transplantation. Particularly, transplant recipients generally had poor lifestyle habits that even top medical experts would find difficult to manage, which led to organ damage and the necessity for transplantation. Therefore, they inevitably have lifestyle habits that must be corrected.

What can simultaneously solve these two challenges is improving poor lifestyle habits through the Newstart lifestyle (refer to Life Story Part 6), which creates an environment where the body’s best medical expert can work well.

Among the eight components of Newstart, the first is Life Diet, which involves eating a variety of plant-based foods, including fruits, vegetables, and grains, in their whole form without selective eating. Along with this, it is important to reduce the intake of sugar?which causes many problems when consumed excessively?as well as processed or refined bad carbohydrates, saturated fats, trans fats, salt, and alcohol.

Along with this, practicing the other Newstart components?exercise, water, sunlight, temperance, air, rest, trust, and love?is also important.

Independent Researcher