Living Kidney Donors: Who, How, When?
1Belfast City Hospital, Belfast, UK
2Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, USA
Living Kidney Donors: Who, How, When?
Description
Every year, hundreds of patients die waiting for a kidney transplant due to a shortage of organ donors, with a waiting time for a suitable (deceased) donor organ that might reach several years, particularly for some ethnic groups. Living kidney donation offers the recipient the best opportunity of success in terms of definitive renal replacement therapy, with superior survival compared to deceased donor kidneys, and the possibility to preemptively address renal replacement therapy without facing the burden of dialysis.
There is unfortunately still limited awareness about eligibility to donate a kidney from a relative or a friend, to a specific patient or for unspecified (altruistic) donation. Furthermore, programs like paired and pooled schemes are not universally present, being introduced only in the last few decades and predominantly active in the UK, Netherlands, and USA. Histocompatibility matching is a fundamental determinant of long-term outcomes for high quality donors, such as living donors, and to get the best out of this limited organ pool, it often requires additional expertise. There are also interesting aspects related to the psychological benefits that living kidney donors, particularly altruistic, might gain after their generous act.
This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest research and innovation on living kidney donation to increase awareness about this underutilized resource. We encourage submissions related to long-term risks, cultural and psychological aspects, immunological challenges, surgical techniques, and kidney sharing schemes. Original articles based on clinical experience are welcome; likewise, we hope to attract review articles which describe the current state of the art.
Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:
- ABOi living kidney donation
- Hypertension after living donation
- HLA epitope matching in living donation
- Minimally invasive surgical techniques in living kidney donation
- Paired and pooled schemes in living donation