Anat Cell Biol.  2021 Mar;54(1):59-64. 10.5115/acb.20.261.

Body donation trends in Yonsei University: a statistical analysis of donor records

• Park HJ
• Ahn H
• Ki E
• Lee JS
• Choi Y
• Hu KS
• Chun YM
• Kim HJ

• KMID: 2514584
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.5115/acb.20.261

Abstract

Body donation trends in Korea have changed significantly over the last 3 decades. Establishing a body donation system will promote donations to universities for academic purposes. Yonsei University College of Medicine started its own body donation system in 1992, including documenting donors’ records. However, there has been no reported attempt to analyze the trend of these records, which could provide noteworthy information that can be interpreted for medical advances. This study performed a statistical analysis of the donors’ records between 1992 and 2019 to analyze the sociological and anthropological changes. Donor personal information such as sex, age, religion, and place and cause of death were extracted from the Yonsei University College of Medicine database. Our statistical analysis revealed significant correlations between donors’ records and the changes in the number of geriatric hospitals, religious beliefs, number of donations, and donor age.

Keyword

Body donation; Trend; Yonsei University; Donors’ records; Statistics

Figure

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  Fig. 1 Age distribution of donors by year, with significant differences each year indicated using a one-way ANOVA test (P<0.001). Data are mean and standard deviation values.

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  Fig. 2 Donor religions. Of the 1,583 who verified their religion, 84.5% were Christian, 4.0% were Catholic, 3.9% were Buddhist, 7.5% had no religion, and 0.1% were others (Confucianism).

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