A living donor transplant is a procedure in which a kidney is surgically removed from a healthy person and placed in a person with kidney failure.

A living donor transplant has many advantages over a cadaver kidney transplant, the most being a significantly higher success rate. Additional reasons include: A kidney from a live donor generally functions immediately after transplant, a cadaver kidney may take several days or weeks to function normally. The living donor transplant can be scheduled. Allowing the recipient and the donor preparation time. You will not know when a cadaver kidney will be available, and surgery must be performed very soon after it is available. There is a reduced risk of rejection. It will shorten the amount of time you have to wait to receive a kidney transplant. The average wait time for a cadaver kidney is 3-5 years. With a known donor you can receive the kidney transplant after he or she completes the donor evaluation and is determined to be a suitable donor, and after the Transplant Team has determined that you are a suitable transplant recipient.

A person with one kidney is no more likely to get kidney disease than a person with two kidneys. Even if the most common forms of kidney disease were to occur, a person with one kidney has no major disadvantage because medical kidney diseases attack both kidneys simultaneously. After surgery, the donors remaining kidney will increase in size and function. The donor’s chance for a long, normal and healthy life remains the same with one kidney.

Kidney donor surgery is a very safe operation. As with any surgery, there is risk of bleeding and infection. The most advanced surgical technique, laparascopic nephrectomy, has reduced the hospital stay to 1 or 2 days, resulted in less pain and scarring, and has reduced full recovery time from 8 to 12 weeks down to 2 to 4 weeks.