Advantages:

For a person in need of a kidney transplant, there are many advantages to a living-donor transplant.

You Can Have A Very Short Wait.

With more than 50,000 Americans now on waiting lists for kidney transplants, and fewer than one-fifth that number of cadaver kidneys available each year, the wait for a cadaver kidney continues to grow longer.

While the length of time a person has to wait for a cadaver kidney to become available depends on an individual's medical condition, blood type and tissue type, and varies from center to center, a wait of one to two years or more is not uncommon. And some number of patients with end stage renal disease may even die while waiting on the list for a suitable cadaver organ to become available.

If an eligible living donor offers to give you an organ, and proves to be an acceptable match, the transplant operation could proceed in a matter of weeks.

You Can Receive The Transplant While in Relatively Good Health.

While most recipients of cadaver kidneys today are already on dialysis, a person with advanced kidney disease who is not yet on dialysis can choose to proceed with a living-donor transplant while still in relatively good health.

Recovery from transplant surgery, and a return to an active live, obviously is easier if a person's health has not seriously deteriorated.

You Can Avoid Spending Months or Years on Dialysis.

For a person who has not experienced dialysis, it is hard to overstate the value of avoiding this experience. While dialysis keeps kidney patients alive, it forces them to alter their eating and drinking habits, diminishes their ability to perform their jobs, restricts their opportunities to travel or take vacations, and frequently impacts their personal relationships.

A living donation kidney transplant, if performed before the need for dialysis arrives, can spare a person months or years of waiting for a transplant on dialysis.

You Can Arrange to Have the Transplant at Your Convenience

If you have a qualified living donor prepared to give you a kidney, the two of you can work out a convenient date for surgery with your transplant center -- avoiding the months or years of uncertainty endured by persons who never know when (or if) they will receive a call telling them that a cadaveric kidney has become available.

Your New Kidney Will Likely Function Sooner and Better.

The main benefit of a living donor kidney transplant is that your new kidney is likely to function sooner and better than if it came from a cadaver donor.

For starters, the quality of the donated organ -- coming from a person in good health and with good kidney function -- tends to be superior to a cadaveric kidney, which may well have been subjected to some degree of trauma. The time between the moment the kidney stops functioning in one donor and begins functioning in the transplant recipient is minimized. A living-donor kidney generally begins functioning immediately in the recipient, where a cadaveric kidney may not begin functioning in the recipient for some number of hours, days or even up to a few weeks.

And the bottom line is found in the organ survival rates. Three years after the transplant, living donor kidneys are still functioning in 87 percent of all recipients -- compared to 76.3 percent for cadaveric kidneys. And five years after transplant, living donor kidneys are still functioning in 78.4 percent of all recipients -- compared to 64.7 percent for cadaveric kidneys.

Disadvantages:

From the standpoint of the person in need of a kidney transplant, there really are no medical disadvantages to opting for a living-donor transplant. Issues that need to be considered by the donor are addressed in the section "What Should I Consider."

As with all information provided in this site, it is offered for educational purposes only, and it is not intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your own physician or healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.