An organization coordinating bone marrow transplants has found a huge disparity in survival rates for the procedure at Japanese hospitals, ranging from 20 percent to 88 percent, according to officials of the organization.
The Japan Marrow Donor Program is considering disclosing the rate for each hospital so patients can choose one where they have a better chance of living, and stopping coordination of transplants for others, they said.
The program has compared the survival rates of patients eight years after transplants at seven major hospitals that have conducted numerous transplants.
Currently, there are 128 hospitals designated as qualified medical facilities for such transplants. The program was established in 1991 and comprises volunteer workers in the field of marrow transplants and medical workers including doctors and nurses.
The organization said it will come up with a decision on the issue during this fiscal year.
It checked survival rates for 545 people with chronic myelogenous leukemia for whom it mediated transplants between 1993 and 2001. It discovered that the rates between the seven hospitals with more than 30 transplants ranged from 20 percent to 88 percent.
The organization has not released the names of the hospitals.
The cause of the differences in the rate cannot be explained merely by donor-recipient marrow mismatches.
The program will ask the medical associations to analyze the problems at hospitals with low survival rates and will consider ending their qualification if they fail to improve.