Body donation trends in Yonsei University: a statistical analysis of donor records

Abstract

Body donation trends in Korea have changed significantly over the last 3 decades. Establishing a body donation system will promote donations to universities for academic purposes. Yonsei University College of Medicine started its own body donation system in 1992, including documenting donors' records. However, there has been no reported attempt to analyze the trend of these records, which could provide noteworthy information that can be interpreted for medical advances. This study performed a statistical analysis of the donors' records between 1992 and 2019 to analyze the sociological and anthropological changes. Donor personal information such as sex, age, religion, and place and cause of death were extracted from the Yonsei University College of Medicine database. Our statistical analysis revealed significant correlations between donors' records and the changes in the number of geriatric hospitals, religious beliefs, number of donations, and donor age.

The creation of a body donation program at Federal University of Juiz de Fora in Brazil: academic importance, challenges and donor profile

“…The relevance of donation programs to supply demands of bodies and anatomical specimens to teaching institutions in different countries and regions worldwide is widely evident and validates the current findings [ 13 , 27 , 44 - 46 ]. At the University of Otago, in New Zealand, the bequest program of the School of Medical Science has been active since 1943, with more than 140 annual registers in the last decades, and also with an approximate reception of 3,000 bodies [ 45 ].…”

“…At the University of Bologna, in Italy, the authors observed an increase from 12 to 431 living donors between the creation of its bequest program in 2013 and the first trimester of 2020 [ 13 ]. The number of body donations in Korea increased from 7 to 128 annually at the Yonsei University College of Medicine between 1992 and 2019, reaching a total of 2415 donors [ 27 ]. In Brazil, the UFCSPA used to receive about 5 donors registers a year.…”

“…An important means of accessing Sempre Vivo is the website of the Department of Anatomy, which may partly justify the average age among registered profiles. On the other hand, Park et al [ 27 ] have found a gradual increase in the average age for body donation over 28 years of their bequest program. Jedrzejewski and Ritter [ 47 ] found a higher average age, around 82 years, in Rhode Island, USA, which may be associated with a higher life expectancy of the local population [ 48 ].…”

“…In this context, an alternative for the maintenance of an anatomical collection at Brazilian universities is to encourage voluntary donations of living donors, an already established strategy in other countries [ 19 , 24 - 27 ]. The creation of programs with this aim answers to the request of individuals who intend to donate their own bodies to research and studies, providing a legal resource to fulfill this wish [ 28 , 29 ].…”

“…Body donation is accountable for the totality of bodies obtained in Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, Japan, and New Zealand, whereas in the United States, Uruguay, Portugal, Korea, and South Africa most of the cadavers used in anatomy laboratories are from donation [ 23 , 27 , 31 , 32 ]. In Brazil, there are successful programs in capital cities, such as at the University of São Paulo and at the Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA); in the latter institution, the program has been running successfully since 2008 and it currently supplies all the demand in undergraduation [ 19 , 24 ].…”