Kidney transplant program could do more surgeries with more donors
When Veronica Lessard's painful migraine headache wouldn't abate in 2017, she visited Kingston General Hospital, where she ended up staying for a week in the intensive care unit while doctors tried to identify what was causing her pain.
She was in poor condition, and it took doctors a period of time to diagnose her with focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), scarring of the glomeruli of the kidney, which filter and aid in the cleaning of the body's blood.
Lessard was in kidney failure and would be on peritoneal dialysis for the next four years.
“I did it every day at home,” Lessard told the Whig-standard. “You have to hook up to a tube every night.”
The schedule severely limited her ability to travel and enjoy her life. She got on the list of patients waiting for a donated kidney.
In April 2022, she got the call that a kidney was available for her.
She's now marking two successful years since that serious surgery, which was completed in Kingston.
Kingston Health Sciences Centre is home to the Regional Renal Program of Southeastern Ontario and the Kingston Kidney Transplant Program, which completes approximately 20 to 25 kidney transplants each year.
In an informational document distributed by University Hospitals of Kingston Foundation, Dr. Khaled Shamseddin, a transplant nephrologist, the medical director of the Kingston Kidney Transplant Program and an associate professor in the department of medicine at Queen's University, says the program is hoping to ramp up the number of surgeries it performs each year to help improve the quality of life of more patients.
He wrote that the need for kidneys is the main obstacle to performing more surgeries.
“We have a higher need for donor kidneys than the current supply,” he wrote, encouraging people to learn more about becoming an organ donor.
“You may be able to help more people like Veronica find a new lease on life,” he wrote.
As of May 7, there are 1,253 people on the organ transplant waitlist in Ontario, with 802 of those individuals waiting for a kidney.
While most donated kidneys come from deceased donors — as is the case with Lessard's kidney — there is also a program to match living donors with those in need.
In 2023, Shamseddin told the Whig-standard during a one-onone interview that living kidney donors can give a kidney to the network of available organs, as one local woman did on behalf of a friend of hers.
“We are born with two kidneys, but we can live with one,” Shamseddin said in 2023. “The risk of kidney failure (in the living donor) after donation is minimal, around 0.3 to 0.5 per cent, not much higher than the general population. We make sure that everyone is healthy enough to donate one of their two kidneys.”
Lessard's quality of life has turned around since her life-saving surgery, and her daughter, Krista, is amazed at her mother's health improvement since receiving her transplant.
“It's so nice to actually be able to see this person with all this energy, wanting to go out and do things and waking up, ready to go, having more energy than her own kids,” Krista, who works with UHKF, said.
In April, Ontario Health and its Trillium Gift of Life Network ran its annual Be a Donor Month campaign, encouraging Ontario residents to register as organ and tissue donors.
“Support for organ and tissue donation among Ontarians stands strong at 90 (per cent), yet only 35 (per cent) are registered donors,” Rebecca Cooper, vice-president for Ontario Health's Ontario Renal Network and Trillium Gift of Life Network, said in a written statement, describing the monthlong campaign as a “significant opportunity for the province to come together to bridge this gap by educating and inspiring people to register, while also fostering hope, nurturing compassion and empowering individuals to have important conversations with their loved ones.”
For more information on how to become an organ donor, visit www. beadonor.ca.
"We have a higher need for donor kidneys than the current supply.