Living donors increase in U.S.

Living donors increase in U.S.
Kidney transplants are the most frequent type, and the number is up nearly tenfold since 1995.
By Mark Berman


The number of living kidney donors is on the rise.

In 1988, there were 1,817 kidney donations nationally involving living donors and 3,874 involving a deceased donor. Last year, there were 6,434 living kidney donors and 7,181 deceased donors, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.

There were 154 living kidney donors in Virginia in 2006 and 129 deceased donors.

There are more than 2,500 people in Virginia waiting for organ transplants, and most are waiting for kidneys, said Dena Reynolds, spokeswoman for LifeNet Health, the agency that coordinates organ and tissue donations in Virginia.

An average of three people in Virginia die each week waiting for a transplant, she said.

The waiting period in Virginia for a deceased kidney donor is five to seven years.

"There is a huge shortage of available kidneys for patients in the United States, so we're relying more and more on living donation," said Dr. Kenneth Brayman, director of the kidney transplant program for the University of Virginia Medical Center and the surgeon who performed Kevin Board's transplant. "The immunosuppression today is so good that we basically are not concerned about rejection nearly as much as we used to be."

UVa Medical Center performs about 120 kidney transplants a year, Brayman said, and about half of the recipients get kidneys from a live donor. He said more of the live donors are nonrelatives, including friends and spouses, than blood relatives.

The number of living kidney donations where someone makes a donation to a friend or acquaintance is also on the rise. There have been 795 such transplants nationally this year (as of Nov. 2) and there were 1,438 last year, compared with 155 in 1995.

Kidney transplants are the most frequent type of living donation. There is little risk of living with one kidney because the remaining kidney can do the work of two kidneys, according to the OPTN. Still, donating a kidney is not a decision to be made lightly.

Among the risks for donors are complications following surgery such as infection or bleeding.

"There could be any kinds of complications, all the way up to death," said Anne Paschke, a spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing. "There could be an artery nicked during surgery. There could be infection. ... There hasn't been enough following of everyone ... over time to know what other potential long-term risks there might be."

There is no increased risk of high blood pressure, kidney failure and death among donors compared to the general population, Brayman said.

"But it still is a major surgery," Brayman said. "It's small, but there is a defined risk. ... We've never had one, but there have been deaths reported."

The survival rates for the recipient are better with kidneys from living donors than from deceased donors, Paschke said.

People can sign up to be an organ and tissue donor at the Department of Motor Vehicles or at save7lives.org.