More and more kidney transplants in Shanghai are being conducted between patients and relatives.

Medical experts say these live transplants are more effective and have a higher success rate than the traditional method where organs from corpses are used.

Local hospitals in Shanghai have conducted 60 live kidney transplants from January to June this year - since 1982, 200 such transplants have been carried out.

"About two-thirds of our kidney transplants are between patients and relatives so far this year. Last year more than 90 percent of the kidneys transplanted were from corpses," said Dr Ling Jianyue from Renji Hospital's organ transplant center, which has conducted five live kidney transplants this year.

Dr Zhu Tongyu from Zhongshan Hospital said 60 percent of its kidney transplants this year were live and added that patient education and the introduction of minimally invasive surgery for the donors have helped increase live transplants.

"Compared with organs from corpses, people receiving kidneys from relatives suffer fewer rejection problems and survive longer," he said. "The 10-year level of survival for a patient who has received a transplanted kidney from a corpse is 50 percent, while for those who receive live transplants the level is 70 to 80 percent."

China has the second highest number of organ transplants in the world, after the United States. There are some 10,000 transplants conducted in the country every year and about half of these transplants are kidneys.

However, there are 1.5 million Chinese suffering organ failure and waiting for transplants.

"China has one million patients suffering uremia and this number is increasing by 12 to 15 percent annually. About half of the patients are suitable for transplants but the 5,000 transplants carried out annually is far from meeting the demand," said Tang Xiaoda, director of Shanghai Organ Transplant Association. "The city has 4,000 new uremia patients every year. At present, about 8,000 patients depend completely on dialysis. Local hospitals only do 500 to 600 transplants because of the shortage of organs."

Currently in China, only four percent of kidney transplants are between patients and relatives, far below the worldwide level of 30 percent. In the United States, half of the organs are donated by relatives while in Japan more than 90 percent come from relatives.

To encourage live transplants, the Shanghai Roche Pharmaceuticals and the Ministry of Health launched a project this year providing live transplant recipients with 8.09 million yuan (US$1.07 million) worth of anti-rejection medication.

(Shanghai Daily August 9, 2007)