Perceptions of transplant surgery among living liver donors in Japan.

CONTEXT

To minimize impaired psychosocial outcomes among living liver donors, it may be useful to obtain their views about being a donor with respect to their specific backgrounds.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the perceptions of living liver donors with respect to transplant surgery and to determine whether any differences in perceptions were related to the recipient's age or prognosis.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PATIENTS: In total, 240 living liver donors (mean age, 44.4 years) openly and freely described their views on transplant.

RESULTS

Content analysis of the descriptions revealed 4 categories: grateful for the benefits of living donor liver transplant (n = 143, 59.6%), facing the limitations of living liver transplant (n = 125, 52.1%), donor stress (n = 105, 43.8%), and crucial preoperative period (n = 75, 31.2%). The frequency of descriptions of gratitude for the benefits of transplant differed significantly between adult-to-adult and adult-to-child transplants: donors to children (ie, recipients <18 years old) were more grateful than were donors to adults (ie, recipients ≥18 years old). In addition, descriptions of gratitude differed significantly depending on the recipient's prognosis: donors with recipients who survived were more grateful and experienced fewer difficulties than did donors with recipients who died.

CONCLUSIONS

In general, living liver donors were satisfied with transplant surgery but experienced living donor liver transplant as a burden, which was affected by the transplant outcome and the age of the recipient.