Understanding the Kidney Transplant

Kidney transplantation is a practice that puts a healthy kidney from another person into your body. This one new kidney takes over the work of your two failed kidneys. Kidney transplantation is the organ transplant of a kidney in a patient with end-stage renal disease.

Once a person’s kidneys fail, three medication alternatives are on hand: hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis and kidney transplantation. If you suffer advanced and enduring kidney failure, kidney transplantation possibly will be the treatment alternative that lets you to live much like you lived before your kidneys failed.

Several transplanted kidneys originate from donors who have died. The sign for kidney transplantation is end-stage renal disease, despite the main cause. Diabetes is the most general reason of kidney transplant, accounting for about 25% of persons in the US.

Statistics reveal that a total of about 9,000 kidney transplants occur every year from cadavers and about 3,000 transplants occur from living related donors. Living unrelated donors account for 9,000 transplants per year. The first successful kidney transplant was done in 1954 in both Boston and Paris. These were kidney transplants done between identical twins which don’t have problems with rejection.

Living donors are carefully evaluated to make sure they are medically and psychologically able to donate their kidneys for kidney transplant. Kidneys from living donors have a better success rate than do kidneys from deceased donors. The best organs for kidney transplant come from the brain dead donors. The patient can also receive a kidney transplant first, followed by a pancreas transplant at a later date.

Please read more on Liver Transplant

Tags: end-stage renal disease, Kidney Transplantation, living donor transplantation, renal transplantation