Korean J Transplant.  2021 Oct;35(Supple 1):S91. 10.4285/ATW2021.OP-1132.

Impact of kidney donation on changing in physical, emotional, and socioeconomic status

• Kim Y
• Lee JW
• Kang E
• Park J
• Park S
• Kim YC
• Kim YS
• Lee H

• KMID: 2521385
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4285/ATW2021.OP-1132

Abstract

Background
Kidney donation induces not only a physical burden but also an emotional, socioeconomic burden in living kidney donors. Composed to the substantial interest for major clinical outcomes such as mortality and end-stage kidney disease, subjective conditions including physical, emotional, and socioeconomic status were disregarded for exploring.
Methods
A total of 429 donors were recruited for the survey in two tertiary hospitals in Korea between February and November 2020. The survey was conducted by divided into pre-donation and post-donation. The survey was composed of baseline characteristics, questions for quality of life, including subjective health score, 36-Item Short Form Survey, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and socioeconomic status. We used McNemar’s test and paired t-test for comparing the characteristics between the pre- and post-donation.
Results
There were 130 and 299 donors who answered pre- and post-donation surveillance, respectively. The main reason to decide donation was the willingness to recipients’ health and happiness (59.1%) or families’ benefit and happiness (52.3%). Also, the main concern to hesitate to donate was physical problems such as the potential risk of surgical complications (22.6%) and kidney failure (20.8%). The subjective health score was significantly decreased from 100 to 36.3 after donation. All categories in SF-36 showed worse change, and the score for depressive mood was also significantly increased after donation. Nevertheless, most donors (84.4%) answered they would donate again if they can go back to before donation. Most employed donors experienced vacation for more than 2 months include unpaid vacation. Payment for kidney donation was performed by donors (40.8%), recipients (35.4%), and divided (17.5%). There were 25.8% of donors who unaware of the refund system after donation.
Conclusions
Although donation raised multifarious burdens, most donors had a willingness to donate for altruistic reasons. Multiplicative supports comprise of social and medical aspects would be essential to encourage affirmative donation with considering both aspects of donors and recipients.