By Nicole Ostrow March 9 (Bloomberg) — People who donate a kidney in the U.S. don’t die any faster than nondonors long term, according to a large study that looked at donors over 15 years. Within the first 90 days after surgery to donate a kidney, their death rate was slightly higher at 3 per 10,000, compared with less than 1 per 10,000 in healthy nondonors, according to research from Johns Hopkins University. Over 15 years, there was no difference in deaths of donors compared with others matched by age, health status, gender and race, said the study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association . Kidney transplants have almost doubled over the past 15 years in the U.S. as more older people became eligible and higher rates of diabetes led to kidney disease and increased demand, said Dorry Segev , lead author of the study. The need for kidneys far outpaces the organs available each year, with more than 83,000 on a U.S. waiting list and 15,402 transplants performed from January through November last year, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network . “Over the last 15 years, live kidney donation remains a very safe operation,” said Segev, an associate professor of surgery and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a March 5 telephone interview. “There is no evidence that living with one kidney rather than living with two kidneys after donating a kidney is associated with any increased risk of dying prematurely.” Earlier Evidence Previous studies that found kidney donation was safe have been much smaller and often lacked well-matched comparison groups, according to the study authors. The research analyzed data from a national registry of 80,347 living kidney donors in the U.S. who gave their organ from April 1994 to March 2009. They were compared with 9,364 people who were part of a national health survey . Over those 15 years, 25 people died in the first 90 days after surgery, making their risk of dying from surgery 3.1 per 10,000 cases. That compared with 0.4 per 10,000 people for similarly healthy people who participated in the health survey. That makes the short-term risk of death after kidney donation surgery six times lower than from dying after gallbladder removal , when patients are sent home the same day as their surgery, the authors said. Donating a kidney is “one of the safest operations you could ever undergo, although the risk is not zero,” Segev said. One Year Later A year following the surgery, the risk of dying for those who donated a kidney was similar to the nondonors who participated in the health survey, the study found. Men and black people had a slightly higher risk of dying following the procedure, but their overall risk was still small, the researchers said. The need for U.S. kidney donations has increased as rates of diabetes and obesity have risen. Diabetes can lead to kidney disease over 20 to 30 years, eventually requiring treatment by dialysis or a transplant, according to the International Diabetes Federation. In the U.S., the number of people with diabetes awaiting a kidney transplant has almost tripled e over the past decade to almost 25,000 from about 9,600, according to data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Most kidney donations from the living go to families and friends, Segev said. About 100 people every year will donate a kidney without a specific person in mind. The study was funded by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, supported by a federal agency. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1@bloomberg.net .
Read more from the original source:
Kidney Donors Don’t Shorten Their Lives by Giving Up Organ, Research Shows
