Surgical Options
Types of Kidney Transplants
Kidneys for transplantation come from two sources:
- Living donors - family members, spouses, or friends, who are at least 18 years of age.
- Deceased donors - people who have died and donated their organs for transplant.
Living Donors
The Emory Transplant Team encourages living donor transplants for the following reasons:
- One of your blood relatives may provide a closer genetic match. The long-term success rate of living donor kidney transplants is excellent.
- A living donor's kidney will be removed in a scheduled surgery, thus eliminating the wait for a deceased donor.
- The likelihood of immediate functioning of your kidney after a living donor transplant is greater because of the short length of time the donor kidney is without blood supply.
Patients may feel uncomfortable asking family members or friends to donate a kidney. But while the subject may be difficult to talk about, they may find that their family and friends are indeed interested in being evaluated as living donors. The Emory transplant team will evaluate potential donors very carefully and only accept individuals as a donor if he or she is healthy and able to donate. Patients will receive more detailed information about living donors during their evaluation.
Deceased Donors
If a patient has been approved for transplant and does not have any living donors, or if he/she is unsure about living donors, then he/she will be placed on the deceased donor waiting list. Once a patient is accepted for transplant, their name is placed on the national waiting list which is maintained by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
UNOS is the national agency that regulates organ-sharing. Whenever a kidney becomes available in Georgia, LifeLink Foundation of Georgia reports it to UNOS so their computer can search the entire country for the best genetic match for that kidney. If a kidney from another state matches perfectly with an Emory patient, that kidney will be offered to Emory. This policy is called “mandatory sharing” and was instituted because of the improved success rate of perfectly matched kidneys. If no perfectly matched candidate to a Georgia donor can be found anywhere in the United States , then the donor kidney is offered to the person on the Georgia list who is the most appropriate recipient for the donated kidney.
LifeLink Foundation of Georgia is the non-profit agency that evaluates and manages all potential deceased donors in Georgia, following strict guidelines and testing procedures to maximize the safety and success rate of kidney transplantation. LifeLink coordinates the recovery and placement of deceased donor organs within the state or region.
Kidney/Pancreas Transplant
If a patient has both Type I diabetes and kidney failure, we may recommend a transplant that includes both a healthy kidney and a healthy pancreas instead of just a kidney transplant. One key reason is that the newly transplanted pancreas will produce proper amounts of insulin to maintain blood sugar at normal levels. Since elevated blood sugar is associated with kidney damage, returning blood sugar levels to normal may protect the new kidney from diabetic damage. A kidney-pancreas transplant may also help prevent other complications of diabetes from becoming worse. Most patients with diabetes are able to stop taking insulin injections following a kidney-pancreas transplant.
