Although kidney donors face a higher risk of death in the 90 days immediately following surgery because of the risks inherent in major surgery, researchers say the findings confirm that the practice of live kidney donation should continue to be considered a reasonable and safe alternative to using deceased donor organs.
Transplant surgeon Dr Dorry L. Segev, associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine declared, “If you are cleared by a transplant center to donate your kidney, donating your kidney is a safe operation. And you don’t have any increased risk of dying down the road with one kidney as compared to matched health people who have two kidneys.”
The study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University researchers involved the analysis of 80,347 donors for a period of five years and compared their survival outcomes with data from 9364 participants of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The study results revealed that within a period of five years the mortality rate was the same in both groups. After 12 years, only 1.5 per cent of donors had died compared to 2.9 per cent among people who had not donated.
More than 6,000 people donate kidneys every year to help someone with end-stage kidney disease.
Written by Snigdha Taduri for Biomed-ME