In?uenced by the oriental traditional culture, the general population in east Asia always hopes to keep their body intact after death
[1, 10-12]. In addition, there is not yet the brain death legislation in China. There is no exact number of cadaveric organ donation in China each year, but it is believed to be much lower than that in American-European countries, which makes it very difficult to perform cadaveric liver transplantation. To alleviate this defect, living donor liver transplantation was rapidly developed since its first introduction in China. Although great progress has been made in the technique of living donor liver transplantation, there are still potential risks for the donor with a mortality rate of 0.2% and a surgical morbidity rate of almost 16%
[13].
In spite of the potential risk associated with this type of liver donation, in our study, we found most Chinese medical students were in favor of living liver donation, especially when the donation is for a relative. This is an important fact because the medical students will become the health care professionals who will play an active role in the promotion of living liver donation in the future[7].
In our study, we found a strong relationship between attitude toward living liver donation and attitude toward other types of organ donations, including cadaveric liver donation and living kidney donation. This result clearly coincides with the study in Spain. This means that it is very important for people to accept the idea of the altruistic behavior[2, 5-6]. This altruistic behavior means extirpation of a healthy person’s organ to improve another person’s quality of life, or even save someone’s life. However, this behavior is not completely selfless. Our study showed that the respondents’ willingness to accept a donated living liver greatly influenced their attitude toward living liver donation. This means that living liver donation is also a reciprocal behavior, namely the balance of the pay and return.
We found another factor that might affect the students’ attitude toward living liver donation, namely their attitude of decision of donating the organs of a family member. This suggests that most of the students believe this donation being the donor’s autonomous behavior and the donor’s decision should be respected.
In our study, there was no relationship between students’ attitude and the psychosocial factors, such as sex, grade, and religion. This result is different from some European studies[14-15].
It should be highlighted that there is no difference in the students’ attitude among the five grades, which indirectly indicate the lack of the education about organ donation and transplantation in the medical school. Education programs have recently been suggested as a new approach to solving the organ shortage[16-17]. However, there is no course about the organ donation and transplantation in the medical students’ curriculum in China, and the medical students are poorly educated in this area. Our study also showed that most of the students had great interest in this subject and they needed more courses and lectures about this area. We should introduce an education program about this subject in the traditional curriculum of the medical school. As the future health care professionals, the medical students should be well educated in this subject. They will play a crucial role in the promotion and development of living liver donation and more lives with end-stage liver disease will be saved in China.
The medical students have a favorable attitude toward living liver donation in China. The students’ attitude toward other types of organ donation and the willingness to accept living donated liver influence their attitude toward living liver donation. There is a lack of education about the organ donation and transplantation for the medical students in China and more education program should be incorporated into their traditional curriculum.
