I’m a recent kidney donor and I want to clear up a few things.
1-Dialysis and transplant are not interchangeable. Transplant before ever needing dialysis is shown to have great improvement vs transplant after dialysis. The kidney lasts longer, the recipient lives longer. Living donors enable pre-emptive transplants.
2- Donor chains facilitated by nondirected or advanced donors enable the most hard to match recipients to get a kidney. They don’t just shorten wait time. This is especially true if the donor goes through National Kidney Registry (USA only) which specializes in kidney transplant efficiency.
3- Standards vary dramatically between transplant centers and there are no universal donor protections. NKR is changing that, leading the world in donor protections with rigorous evaluation and surgery protocols, as well as protections like short term disability insurance and the like.
4- Kidney transplant without the need for longterm immune suppressants is not longer a pipe dream, it has happened successfully. I suspect it will the new standard in a decade. Currently the way this is done is that the donor donates both an organ and stem cells. This will reduce/eliminate the need for replacement organs, reduce longterm costs, and extend the lives of recipients.
5- Doing an advanced donation (aka voucher) allows the donor to list 5 people, which in turn enables the first of whom needs a transplant (and is healthy enough to receive one) to essentially ‘skip the line,’ providing direct benefit to a donor’s loved ones. This is an excellent option when a potential recipient is a child and the donor is a middle age or senior person. The child may not need a kidney for many years, by which time the adult may not be able to donate. It’s like an estate plan for your organs.
6- The pandemic has dramatically shortened the lifespan of people on dialysis, particularly those who cannot do their dialysis at home. Mortality rates in dialysis centers are incredibly high and will remain high so long as Covid continues to spread. The benefits of living donation to recipients now are far greater than they were in 2019.
I’m a recent kidney donor and I want to clear up a few things.
1-Dialysis and transplant are not interchangeable. Transplant before ever needing dialysis is shown to have great improvement vs transplant after dialysis. The kidney lasts longer, the recipient lives longer. Living donors enable pre-emptive transplants.
2- Donor chains facilitated by nondirected or advanced donors enable the most hard to match recipients to get a kidney. They don’t just shorten wait time. This is especially true if the donor goes through National Kidney Registry (USA only) which specializes in kidney transplant efficiency.
3- Standards vary dramatically between transplant centers and there are no universal donor protections. NKR is changing that, leading the world in donor protections with rigorous evaluation and surgery protocols, as well as protections like short term disability insurance and the like.
4- Kidney transplant without the need for longterm immune suppressants is not longer a pipe dream, it has happened successfully. I suspect it will the new standard in a decade. Currently the way this is done is that the donor donates both an organ and stem cells. This will reduce/eliminate the need for replacement organs, reduce longterm costs, and extend the lives of recipients.
5- Doing an advanced donation (aka voucher) allows the donor to list 5 people, which in turn enables the first of whom needs a transplant (and is healthy enough to receive one) to essentially ‘skip the line,’ providing direct benefit to a donor’s loved ones. This is an excellent option when a potential recipient is a child and the donor is a middle age or senior person. The child may not need a kidney for many years, by which time the adult may not be able to donate. It’s like an estate plan for your organs.
6- The pandemic has dramatically shortened the lifespan of people on dialysis, particularly those who cannot do their dialysis at home. Mortality rates in dialysis centers are incredibly high and will remain high so long as Covid continues to spread. The benefits of living donation to recipients now are far greater than they were in 2019.