The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic occurred in 2019 (coronavirus disease 2019 [COVID-19]). This impacted all facets of the Korean healthcare system, including life-saving procedures such as organ transplantation. Concerns for potential exposure to SARS-CoV-2 have profoundly altered the process of organ donation and recovery, which is vital to organ transplantation [1-4]. In 2020, COVID-19 substantially impacted on transplant community since the possibility of virus transmission from donors to recipients or donors to health workers have altered the capacity for safe recovery of organs and transplantation.

Western countries have experienced a significant decline in the number of deceased donors and organ transplantations due to increasing COVID-19 infections [4-9]. In comparison, the prevalence of COVID-19 was much lower in the general population of Korea. Furthermore, the number of critically ill patients in Korea was substantially lesser than that of Western countries [10-12]. That being the case, it is necessary to know if the pandemic has affected the number of organ donations and transplantations in Korea. The study aims to determine the number of deceased organ donors and deceased kidney and liver transplantations during the year 2020 using the Korean Network for Organ Sharing (KONOS) and Asan Medical Center databases.

The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Asan Medical Center (IRB No. 2021-1347), which waived the requirement for informed consent due to the retrospective nature of this study and the use of publicly available data. This study was performed in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki 2013.

The purpose of this study was to determine the annual number of KTs and LTs that occurred in Korea in 2020. The annual number of KTs and LTs in the year 2020 were compared with those in 2019 using the KONOS database and the Asan Medical Center organ transplantation database. Student t-test was utilized to compare the number of organ donations and transplantations. Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS ver. 22 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic as it spread rapidly worldwide. As there is no effective treatment for COVID-19, the risk of infection is high in patients awaiting transplant surgery for end-stage organ diseases. In addition, the procurement of organs recovered from deceased donors has decreased as the pandemic progresses. Moreover, living donor organ transplantations have been postponed to re-allocate medical resources for COVID-19 and to avoid nosocomial infection [4-8]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, decision-making regarding whether to proceed with organ transplantation has become a challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has lasted for more than 1 and a half years; therefore, it is necessary to determine its impact on organ transplantation in Korea.

The results of this study indicate that in 2020, there was no significant effect on the number of deceased donors and DDKT/DDLT in Korea, despite being significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, comparison with data from 2019 shows a significant decrease in the number of LDKT and LDLT in Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Lee et al. [14] reported an analysis of the transplantation activities in Severance Hospital and found that organ transplantations that were conducted with living and deceased donors remained stable during the COVID-19 outbreak, as compared to the same period in 2019. Similarly, no significant reduction in organ transplantation was observed in Asan Medical Center in the present study. In 2020, 56 transplant centers performed LT in Korea. Five high-volume centers accounted for 45.3% of the nationwide DDLT cases and 65.1% of the nationwide LDLT cases in 2020 [15]. In addition, four centers have performed more than 100 cases of DDLT and LDLT every year. These data indicate that the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on LTs and KTs might be less significant in high-volume centers compared to low-volume centers. The authors presume that such a reduced impact is attributed to sufficient human resources and intensive care systems for organ transplantation in high-volume centers.

The burden of the COVID-19 pandemic was overwhelming on the healthcare system of Western countries, severely declining the rates of organ donation and transplantation. In the United States of America, a short-term analysis on the impact of COVID-19 on organ transplantation was conducted. The results indicated a strong temporal association between an increase in COVID-19 infections and a striking reduction in the overall number of solid-organ transplantation procedures [8,9]. The same decline has also been observed in several European countries [4-9]. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, the overall reduction in deceased donor transplantations was 90.6% and 51.1% in France and the USA respectively [8]. In both countries, this reduction was mostly observed in the number of KTs [9].

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on organ transplantation has been different between Western countries and Korea. This is primarily caused by a much higher prevalence of COVID-19 in the general population and number of critically ill patients in Western countries. A Korean epidemiologic study revealed that the national COVID-19 death rate was 2.3 per 100,000 [10], which is significantly lower compared to Western countries [11,12].

However, the present study had several limitations. This was a retrospective cohort study with limited information on donors and recipients due to detailed data not being available in the KONOS database. In addition, the results of this study need to be validated through yearly follow-up studies, including data analysis for the year 2021.

In conclusion, the results of this study indicate that the number of DDKT and DDLT remained stable in 2020 despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, a significant reduction in LDKT and LDLT was observed. In Asan Medical Center, however, no decrease in the number of organ transplantations was noted. Further studies are necessary to validate the results of the present study.