An analysis of outcomes for live kidney donors in the U.S. over a 15 year period finds they have similar long-term survival rates compared to healthy individuals who were not kidney donors, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA.
Many patients with end-stage renal (kidney) disease are turning to live donor kidney transplantation to improve survival and quality of life because of the shortage of organs available from the deceased donor pool. "Although many healthy adults are eager and willing to accept the risk of donor nephrectomy [surgical removal of a kidney] to help their loved ones, the responsibility lies within the medical community to quantify these risks as best as possible and to make this information available to those considering donation," the authors write. More than 6,000 healthy U.S. individuals every year undergo nephrectomy for the purposes of live donation; however, safety remains in question because of the limited generalizability of previous studies, according to background information in the article.
Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues examined the outcomes of live kidney donors (80,347) in the United States between April 1, 1994, and March 31, 2009, who were drawn from a mandated national registry. Median (midpoint) follow-up was 6.3 years. A matched group was drawn from 9,364 participants of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III).