Donation Risk Information from CNN

The following article was posted by CNN:
http://tinyurl.com/KidneyDonorRisk

I have copied the article below in case it is removed by CNN.

One startling revelation in the article;
"...risk of death, the most serious surgical complication,”
This ranking would never have occurred to me, but not having gone to medical school, I will have to defer to Dr. Zand.

March 9, 2010
Study: Donating a kidney doesn’t boost risk of premature death
-AET
By Caitlin Hagan
CNN Medical Associate Producer

Live kidney donation is a safe, effective procedure that poses little risk for the premature death of the donor, reports a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That’s welcome news to the more than 106,000 people on the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) transplant list who are waiting on potential donors as of this writing.

The JAMA study is the first of its kind to review the health of live kidney donors over an extended period of time. Researchers looked through more than 80,000 records of people who had donated a kidney between 1994 and 2001. They found that for every 10,000 donors, there were only 3.1 deaths within 90 days of the transplant. Being over age 50 or obese at the time of the transplant did not increase a donors risk of dying prematurely.

“Kidney donation surgery is an extraordinarily safe operation in terms of...risk of death, the most serious surgical complication,” explains Dr. Martin Zand, medical director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs at the University of Rochester Medical Center

Zand says that recipients worrying about potential kidney donors’ health has become major point of concern during the transplant process, even though the number of live kidney transplants performed annually has nearly doubled over the past 15 years. Today nearly 6,000 live kidney transplants happen every year.

“By donating a kidney, they’re concerned their donor will put themselves at risk for everything from minor surgery to development of kidney disease to death,” says Zand. ‘These donors are family members or partners but also people that come forward from the community.”

The hope within the transplant community is that this information will ease some of the concerns expressed by both potential donors and their recipients, particularly because no other research has followed so many live kidney donors for so long.

Generally donors must complete an education process that outlines the risks associated with transplants, before they can donate a kidney. The goal is to make sure each donor is as informed as possible about the surgery they’ve elected to have.


‘There’s an enormous value to this, in terms of public health, in terms of medical practice, - says Zand.

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Posted by: Caitlin Hagan - CNN Medical Associate Producer
Filed under Health