Dialysis and transplantation are the only therapies available for patients with end stage renal disease.
Transplantation offers several distinct advantages, the transplantation patient has an opportunity of regaining normal kidney function, he can avoid the recurrent and enervating need for thrice weekly dialysis, dietary and fluid restrictions can be removed, anemia, bone disease and neuropathy may be rapidly reversed, growth may occur in children and the long term costs of treatment are substantially reduced.
It is generally recognized that the HLA chromosome controls the major histocompatibility antigens in renal transplantation. The primary evidence for this from numerous investigations is that transplants between HLA identical siblings survive at a high rate of approximately 90% 1 year, which is far superior to the survival of grafts from other related or unrelated donors. HLA identical sibling donors are thought to be the only medically and ethically acceptable living donors for transplantation. To find out the general patterns of HLA iden-tical Korean sibling transplants, we studied 24 HLA identical sibling tranplants from April 1979 to Dec. 1983 at the department of surgery, College of Medicine, Yonsei University.
The results are summarized as follows;
1) The age incidence of recipients was prevalent in the 3rd to 4th decade and the ratio of male to female was 20: 4.
2) The age incidence of donors was prevalent in the 3rd decade and the ratio of male to
female was 14: 10. Among 24 cases, younger brothers were 10 cases, elder sisters and younger
sisters were 5 cases in each others and elder brothers were 4 cases. 3) Acute rejection occurred in 11 cases and recovery rate was 100%. 4) The overall graft and patient survival was 100%.
5) Our results were similar to the report of various medical centers.
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