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"but we only need one to live a healthy life"

This is completely untrue. A kidney is not a 'spare'. If so, there wouldn't be a trend toward 'nephron-sparing' surgery for those with renal tumors and otherwise. In other words, instead of taking the entire kidney, surgeons are moving toward only removing the disease-affected parts.

"The latest techniques make this safe for the donor"

This is also untrue. Safe, by clinical standards, means the risk endured in daily living, such as a hangnail. Under no circumstances is undergoing a major surgery to have a needed organ removed 'safe'.

I would never expect a transplant surgeon or facility to be truthful about living kidney donation. After all, they profit from doing transplants. But here are the facts:

According to OPTN, 4.4 living kidney donors die each year in the US within 12 months of surgery.

Many suffer debilitating complications: nerve damage, hernia, intestinal blockage, adrenal dysfunction, pancreatitis, chylous ascites, organ laceration, etc.

20-30% experience depression, anxiety, anger and PTSD yet not a single transplant ctr offers aftercare or support services.

There is NO long-term data on living donors' health and well-being. Identifying info wasn't collected until 1994 and no quality assurances are in place. OPTN's own LD data task force concluded that national data was incomplete and inadequate for analysis. NIH stated that at 20 years of good, comprehensive data was necessary to gauge the long-term effects of living donation on donors (which we don't have)

It's unfortunate that someone who has marketed themselves as a patient advocate would be so uninformed about living donation. Perhaps his research should extend past those who profit from living donor transplants.

www.livingdonor101.com

June 17, 2011 - 8:22am

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