Live donor transplants offer best success rate
Live donors are important to the care of someone with kidney disease, because they can wait years for an organ from someone who’s deceased.
Lisa Magaro, coordinator of the Living Donor Program at University Medical Center, said nationally, the average wait is five to eight years, in California eight to 10 years. In Nevada, she said, it’s one to three years.
“We are the only transplant center in Nevada,” she said. “That allows us to have first opportunity to local donors.” Also, she said, there are only 192 people on the waiting list. Having a living donor eliminates the wait.
“If you are able to find someone to donate a kidney to you and they complete the donation criteria, surgery can be scheduled as soon as evaluations are complete,” she said.
And the outcome tends to be better.
“These kidneys tend to work faster,” she said. “They usually have complete function immediately after transplant,” while, with a kidney from a deceased donor, the recipient may need to remain on dialysis for weeks or even a month after transplant, until the kidney starts to function. Kidneys from a living donor are better because of the minimal time the kidney is out of the body, and the fact that the donor is … well … alive.
“Donors who are approved to be living kidney donors are extremely healthy,” Magaro said. “They have minimal risk of developing any kind of chronic disease. These folks really have good working kidneys.”
Statistically, she said, kidneys from living donors tend to last twice as long as those from deceased donors.
The average donor, she said, is in the hospital for two to five days after surgery, and has an eight-week recovery period before returning to full activities. She said there’s minimal risk involved, beyond pain, hernias or the ever-present risk of infection.
“We do counsel patients post-donation to monitor their blood pressure,” she said. “They will, just by donating that kidney, have a decrease in overall kidney function of 20 to 25 percent. We encourage them to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
Magaro said stranger donations are becoming more common. And if someone wants to donate to a family member or friend but isn’t compatible, the Kidney Pairs Exchange program can help by matching pairs of donors and recipients.
“It can be a really unique event,” she said. “Someone in New York could be donating to one of our patients in Nevada, and our donor could be donating to someone in Florida.”
For more information, call UMC at 702-383-2224 and ask for the living donor coordinator.