Global Perspective on Kidney Transplantation: Thailand

Abstract

Although the first case of kidney transplantation (KT) in Thailand was performed in 1975, the current transplant registry was only created in 2001 by the Thai Transplant Society. The Thai Transplant Registry receives clinical information from every KT center in Thailand annually. The number of KTs in Thailand has gradually increased over the period, especially deceased donor (DD) KTs (1) (Table 1). In 2020, the number of total KTs in Thailand was 712 or 10.68 KTs per million people. DDKTs account for approximately 80% of all KTs. The Ministry of Public Health and Thai Red Cross Society have carried out deceased donor campaigns and established donor hospitals in every region, resulting in a significant increase in the number of DDs in Thailand. Although organ transplants were suspended for a month (April 2020) because of the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 infection, the number of DDKTs still increased from 557 in 2019 to 575 in 2020. However, the organ donation rate in Thailand is still relatively low (4.5 DDs per million people in 2019) (2). The number of living donor (LD) KTs has also steadily decreased in the past 6 years. Last year, 137 LDKTs were performed in Thailand, a decrease from 172 in 2019. Nevertheless, there are currently more than 6500 active KT recipients in the country (1). View this table: Table 1. Number of kidney transplantations in Thailand in the last 10 years Despite an increase in number of KTs in Thailand, the number of patients on the waitlist is also growing. Unlike in the United States (US), where pre-emptive KT is allowed in both DDKT and LDKT, the policy in Thailand currently does not allow pre-emptive DDKT due to shortage of DD kidney. In 2019, there were 6417 ESKD patients waiting for DDKTs (2), and approximately 10% received a KT. Moreover, there …

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