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What is a Kidney Transplant?
 The goal of transplant is to provide you with a single functioning kidney to perform the work that your kidneys are no longer able to do. A successful transplant can return you to a state of good health. The kidney you will receive may be a living gift from a member of your family or a friend. If no living donor is available, you may receive a kidney from someone who has died and donated their kidney (deceased kidney).
Hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis can eliminate wastes from your body and remove excess chemicals from your blood. But, unlike the kidneys, dialysis can't produce vital hormones. Through transplantation, you will get a new kidney that performs all of these vital functions.
Purpose
Kidney transplantation is a procedure that places a healthy kidney from another person into your body. This one new kidney does all the work that your two failed kidneys cannot do.
How it Works
A surgeon places the new kidney inside your body in your lower abdomen. The surgeon connects the artery and vein of the new kidney to your own artery and vein. Your blood flows through the new kidney and makes urine, just like your own kidneys did when they were healthy. The urine flows into the bladder through the ureter of the kidney which is surgically attached to the bladder. The new kidney may start working right away or may take up to a few weeks to make urine. Your own kidneys are usually left where they are, unless they are causing infection or high blood pressure. The surgery takes approximately two to four hours to complete. The average hospital stay is five to ten days.
Where Kidneys Come From
You may receive a kidney from:
- A family member. This is called a living related donor. These are often the most successful transplants.
- A spouse or very close friend. This is called a living unrelated donor.
- A person who has recently died. This is called a deceased donor.
Please see more information about living donor kidney transplant performed at the Hume-Lee Transplant center.
A deceased donor kidney transplant is where someone is waiting on the transplant list. The United Network for Organ Sharing is the national organization that manages the allocation or distribution of organs. The waiting list has more than 94,000 people in need of all organ transplants and over 69,000 waiting for a kidney
transplant in the entire United States . Unfortunately, there are more people waiting for transplants than there
are organs available to be transplanted. At the Hume-Lee Transplant Center, half of the patients on the waiting
list were transplanted on average at 38months (ustransplant.org). These waiting times vary from patient to patient due to individual medical conditions, genetic characteristics and sensitivity of the patient. This is often why more and more people are choosing to have a living donor kidney transplant.
Success Rates
Kidney transplantation is the most successful treatment option for ESRD, and the life expectancy is improved for patients when compared to dialysis treatments.
At the Hume-Lee Transplant Center , patient survival is 91 percent or better after one year and 89 percent after three years for our deceased donor kidney transplant recipients. Our living donor transplant recipients' patient survival is over 98 percent after one year and 98 percent at three years. These survival rates are well above the national averages. (www.ustransplant.org)
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