In excess of 5,000 patients in the United Kingdom are waiting for kidney transplantations, an average of 450 are carried out each year. Unfortunately that isn't where it ends because every day more and more people are added to the transplant list.

There is a severe shortage of donors in this country, this is mostly because there are very few people who carry donor cards. (A donor card is a card you can carry to make sure that your organs are donated to someone else after your death. This maybe a morbid thought, but it saves lives.) Another reason is that people are unaware that you can become a live donor.

To find out how you can ensure your wish to become a donor in the event of your death is acted upon - click here.

On this page:

- The Power of Publicity - Living donors - List of pre-transplant procedures -
- Contact -

The Power of Publicity

Undoubtedly, publicity raises the profile of kidney diseases and has helped in the past increase the rate of kidney transplantation.

It's only by making people aware of becoming a donor that lives can be saved.

Kidney patients are often overlooked as not being in desperate need of a transplant. It is true that a person can survive with kidney failure but the quality of life they will lead is often quite poor. Most kidney patients have to undergo dialysis while they are awaiting a transplant. This is often a lengthy process, most people have to go into hospital two to three times a week for up to four hours at a time to go through dialysis. This not only disrupts their lives and forces them to give up their jobs, but takes a lot out of them too.

Anyone who has lived with a kidney patient will know the intensive list of things that they can not eat or the things they can not do, the tiredness they suffer, the cramps, stomach upsets, dry itchy skin and the sleepless nights, to name but a few, that they suffer.

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Living Donors

A live donor can be anybody who has a matching blood and tissue type to the patient. The idea is to fool the body into thinking that the healthy kidney has always been there and it isn't a foreign body. Usually the donor is a relative such as a brother or sister of the patient, a mother or even a child. Sometimes it is also possible for a patient to receive a kidney from a spouse or partner.

Living donor transplants tend to be more successful than that of a donor who has died. Kidneys from living donors can start working even in the operating theatre, and tend, on average to last longer.

However there should never be any pressure placed upon someone to become a living donor. The whole process is long and harrowing, and the donor almost always comes out of the process worse than the recipient. It could be very easy for the donor to build up feelings of resentment towards the recipient. This is why counselling is always recommended for both the donor and the recipient, and both the donor and the recipient have to be 100% sure that they want to go ahead with the operation.

Once the blood and tissue type has been established, the donor and recipient have to go through many tests to make sure they are both healthy enough in body and mind to have the operation. The doctors have to be 100% sure that the donor is healthy and strong; and a long list of things such as heart, kidneys, urine, liver have to be checked.

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Here is a list of procedures that a donor has to go through before the transplant operation.

Blood samples are taken to check the following:

U& Es Urea & Electrolytes - Checks on the chemistry of the blood and the function of the kidneys

LFTs Liver function tests - Checks liver function to make sure it is normal

Cholesterol - checks for risks of disease inn the heart and blood vessels

CRP & ESR C-reactive protein & erythrocyte sedimentation rate - detects inflammation in the body.

FBC Full blood count - Checks for anaemia

Fasting Blood Glucose - Checks for diabetes

Microalbuminuria - Checks for abnormal levels of protein in the body.

Other checks include:

Mid-stream urine specimen - Checks for urine infections

Urinalysis - Checks urine for abnormalities, of blood, protein, sugar content.

24hr Urine collection - Checks for protein and creatinine being passed through the kidneys

ECG - Checks the heart for abnormalities

Blood Pressure - Checks the blood pressure, if it is too high then the donor will be turned down.

Chest X-ray - Checks for abnormalities in the chest.

Virology Screen - Checks that the donor is not carrying any viruses that could be passed on in the transplant.

Tissue typing - Compares the blood groups and tissue types of the donor and recipient. This test can help predict a possible rejection or success.

Nuclear Medical Scans, GFR (Glomerular filtration rate), MAG3 or DTPA scans, to check the functions of each of the kidneys.

After all these checks the patient and donor can formally be referred to a consultant.

Renal Arteriogram - special X-ray to show the donors kidneys.

Further tissue typing - Checks that nothing has changed since the first blood tests and tissue typing.

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Contact and help

If there is anything you would like to see featured on this page or if you would like any more information on anything to do with kidney disease or transplants then e-mail Gerry at billy.kidney@sheffield.ac.uk or you can also visit our Links page.