Mayo Clinic on living-donor kidney transplant program

Mayo Clinic Arizona has one of the largest living-donor kidney transplant programs in the U.S.

In general, living-donor kidneys will function longer than deceased-donor kidneys. Here are five things you may not know about living-donor kidney donation:

1. There are close to 150,000 people in the Unites States waiting for a kidney transplant, and fewer than 30,000 will receive a transplant each year due to a shortage of donors.
2. Kidney donation is the most common form of living organ donation.
3. You can live a full, healthy life with one kidney.
4. You don’t have to be a match to be able to donate a kidney to help a friend of family member.
5. Recovery is faster than you might think thanks to new surgical advances.

Carrie Jadlowiec, M.D. and Transplant Surgeon from Arizona Mayo Clinic, joined “Arizona Horizon” to tell us more.

According to Jadlowiec many people are unaware that being a living kidney donor is an option and are unaware of the steps they need to take to become one. She said that rep one to becoming a donor is being interested in becoming a donor in the first place. Step two is going through an evaluation.

According to Jadlowiec the evaluation consists of blood tests, meeting with a team of physicians, learning about the health of the potential donor, talking over potential risks and discussing things to look out for afterwards too.

Jadlowiec also commented on how the process of kidney donation surgery also has gotten a lot easier over the years. “There have been a lot of advances both in the evaluation process as well as the surgical process of evaluation so now that process is minimally invasive and its also approached through a fast track type situation where most kidney donors will probably spend about one night in the hospital a lot of kidney donors also feel pretty well recovered about two to three weeks after their surgery.”