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Surgical procedure to implant a healthy kidney into a patient with kidney disease or kidney failure. The kidney transplant may be taken from a living donor or a recently deceased donor.

Description

Kidney transplants are the second (corneal transplant is number 1) most common transplant operation in the United States (over 9,000 cases per year). The operation is easier than all other major organ transplants. The patient can be treated with dialysis (to filter the blood and remove fluid and waste products) until a kidney donor can be found.

The healthy kidney is obtained from a living donor (usually a blood relative) or from a donor that has recently died but has not suffered kidney injury. Transportation of the healthy kidney is done in a cooled saline solution that preserves the organ up to 48 hours, permitting the necessary analyses to determine blood and tissue donor-recipient matching (this matching, in some cases, is done before the operation).

Living donors: (donates kidney):
While the patient is deep asleep and pain-free (general anesthesia), an incision is made in the side of the abdomen (flank). The kidney is removed and the incision is closed.

Kidney recipient (receives kidney):
While the patient is deep asleep and pain-free (general anesthesia), an incision is made in the lower abdomen. The new kidney is stitched into place within the pelvis and the incision is closed.

Indications

Kidney transplant may be recommended for patients with kidney failure caused by:

severe, uncontrollable high blood pressure (hypertension)
infections
diabetes mellitus

Kidney transplant is not recommended for patients who have:

heart, lung, or liver disease
other life-threatening diseases
an infection (such as TB or osteomyelitis)
difficulty taking medications several times each day for the rest of their lives

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