Dinsdales leave Mayo after successful kidney transplants

[okarol]

Dinsdales leave Mayo after successful kidney transplants

By Dan Wright
Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, December 1, 2009 11:19 AM CST

 Andrew Dinsdale and his father, Tom, have left the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., after Andrew successfully donated a kidney and Tom received one Nov. 24 in the largest simultaneous kidney transplant Mayo Clinic has ever performed.

 Andrew, who is a senior at Iowa State University and works at Mary Greeley Medical Center, returned to Ames on Sunday. Tom moved to a room in Rochester’s Gift of Life Transplant House for three more weeks of tests before he can return home to Reinbeck.

 “Everyone is doing great, and all of the donors have left the hospital, and they’re all doing very well,” said Dr. Mikel Prieto, a general surgeon at the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center.

 Prieto did not perform the surgeries, but he said there were no complications from any of the procedures.

 Tom had been on dialysis since April after both of his kidneys failed when he suffered a heart attack. Andrew wasn’t a match to donate to Tom, but he was able to donate to an anonymous recipient through a donation chain, a relatively new process that allows incompatible pairs to donate by finding matches through other incompatible pairs.

 Prieto said the average kidney operates at about half, or 45 to 50 percent, of its capability on an everyday basis, but when one of them is removed from the body, the remaining kidney grows in size and takes on more work. Prieto said the remaining kidney will eventually grow big enough to take on up to 66 percent of the original workload.

 Andrew said he’s still sore from the surgery, but he feels healthy otherwise.

 “My (kidney) will get better over the next few weeks as it grows and takes on more blood and oxygen,” he said. “(I’m) still a little sore right now.”

 Prieto said Tom’s new kidney worked almost immediately once it was attached, which is just one of the many benefits of living donations.

 According to Mayo’s Web site, living kidney transplants last longer. Half of living kidney transplants last 25 years or more, whereas half of cadaver donations fail within 10 years. Before the Dinsdales’ surgeries, doctors in Rochester had performed 86 kidney transplants this year, 64 of which were live donations.

http://www.amestrib.com/articles/2009/12/01/ames_tribune/news/doc4b154f1a019f9789528486.txt