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Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: okarol on September 21, 2009, 02:13:29 PM
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Kidney transplants: Saving lives
* Story updated at 3:06 AM on Sunday, Sep. 20, 2009
George Harvey's prayers, at last, have been answered.
For longer than the local inner-city pastor would care to remember, he has been praying for a donor kidney.
His kidneys don't work properly. That means he must spend hours a week undergoing dialysis, which purifies the blood like a normal kidney would do.
It's a long and expensive process - and one that has robbed him of his strength.
Fortunately, his son Benjamin recently volunteered to donate one of his kidneys. If he is accepted as a donor by Mayo Clinic, Harvey's problems may soon be a thing of the past.
If so, Harvey will be one of the lucky ones. In most cases, recipients get organs from dead donors - and that usually means a long wait.
Waiting lists
Nearly 500 people are on the waiting list for kidney transplants at the local Mayo Clinic, according to Thomas Gonwa, a physician and chairman of its Department of Transplantation.
Between 2 percent to 5 percent of those patients die while waiting for a transplant each year.
Nationwide, The Miami Herald reports, 18 people die every day while waiting for organ transplants.
Mayo typically performs about 100 kidney transplants a year. That accounts for one-third of all organ transplants at the facility.
Harvey's worries are not over. Donors have to be in excellent health, and many are excluded in Mayo's pre-surgery medical evaluations.
The most common causes for exclusion, Gonwa says, are obesity, hypertension, abnormal kidney function and anatomical abnormalities in the donor.
But if his son does pass the medical screening and the transplant takes place, Harvey will be lucky.
The five-year patient survival rate for recipients of a living donor transplant is 90.1 percent. The rate for those with kidneys from a deceased donor is a little smaller, 81.9 percent.
Ideally, more people should donate a kidney, assuming they have two healthy ones.
Overcoming fears
But there are two obstacles, one legitimate and one not.
Fear one: If someone gives up a kidney, he will die if the remaining one fails.
That's unlikely. Of all the people who have donated kidneys at Mayo, Gonwa says, none have died as a result of the other one failing.
Fear two: It can be too expensive for the donor.
That is a legitimate concern.
Medical expenses are covered by insurance, but there is no reimbursement for lost wages.
And the clinic tells donors that they may need six weeks to recuperate, particularly if they do a lot of physical work.
It has been reported that live kidney donors typically live longer than those who do not donate.
That's true, Gonwa confirms, but it's a little misleading. To donate, a person has to be "basically in perfect health."
That means he would be expected to live longer than the population as a whole.
Nationwide, unfortunately, fewer live organ transplants are taking place, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.
The Miami Herald says the trend began at the end of last year, and it might be because of the recession; people cannot afford to take several weeks off work.
What's worse, the number of deceased donors also has dropped slightly across the nation - from 8,085 in 2007 to 7,984 last year.
Greatest gift
There is little risk in becoming a live donor and absolutely nothing to fear if you want to donate a kidney after your death.
When he finally gets his donor kidney, Harvey will be able to return to peaching the gospel, and leading his flock, with his old intensity.
When one donates an organ, it affects more than just the recipient. It impacts everyone around him - not just now, but perhaps many years in the future.
In some cases, that could be hundreds, even thousands, of people.
An organ donation, whether it's a live person's kidney or a deceased person's liver, is more than the gift of life.
It's the gift of endless possibilities.
The beginning
55 years ago: The first successful live donor organ transplant took place in 1954: - Ronald Herrick, age 23, donated a healthy kidney to his identical twin brother, Richard. - The 51/2-hour surgery took place in Boston, and the surgeon later won a Nobel Prize. - Richard met his future wife, a nursing supervisor, in the recovery room. - Richard had a normal, healthy life for eight years, before dying of causes unrelated to the surgery. - Ronald, a retired math teacher from Maine, is still alive. Good news - The Agency for Health Care Administration this summer set up an online Joshua Abbott Organ and Tissue Donor Registry. - Its namesake is a young man who became a transplant recipient at age 29 and a donor one year later. - Previously, Floridians had to go to their local driver license office to register as an organ donor. - With the advent of the Abbott registry, they need only go to www.DonateLifeFlorida.org and fill out the paperwork. - When registering, they are given a user name and password, in case they want to update their wishes. - Even teenagers can sign up. For those between 13 and 17, however, the final decision to go ahead with the transplants, after a death, would be made by a parent or guardian. - More than 3,500 Floridians are awaiting transplants, and this registry could save some of their lives.
Source: www.transplantliving.org, usatoday.com
http://www.jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2009-09-20/story/kidney_transplants_saving_lives
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If only 2% to 5% die when on waiting list each year, then the transplants would cause higher mortality (about 5% a year) than the patients on the list. So the title should have been changed as "Kidney transplants: causing more death". Something is wrong about this report.