| Home | Links | Staff |
Living Donation
There exists a huge disparity between organ demand and supply in transplantation. Consequently as organ availability remains flat and patient need increases, the UVa transplant programs work to augment the supply of organs by offering living donation as an option for kidney and liver transplantation. (Living donation is not an option for pancreas, pancreas islet, heart or (currently) lung transplants.) The decision to be a living donor is a selfless act of giving and therefore all efforts are taken to ensure the well being of the donor.
Our First Commitment: Donor Long-Term Health
All potential donors are carefully screened to ensure that they are physically and psychologically healthy and knowledgeable about the risks and benefits of the donation procedure. A Donor Advocacy Team (DAT) was established in 2001 to provide the donor a healthcare team who's only purpose is to ensure the donor's well being and complete understanding of their options in the evaluation process, meeting all appropriate clinical and ethical standards. The DAT consists of Family Medicine physicians, a social worker and psychologists. UVa has led the country in the development of such a dedicated Donor Advocay Team to ensure the best possible care for all living donors.
About Living Kidney Donation
Living kidney donation was first performed at the University of Virginia in May l969. Living donors come from a variety of sources including relatives of recipients or unrelated individuals such as longtime friends, co-workers, neighbors, spouses or partners and even altruistic or anonymous donors.
There are many advantages to living kidney donation.
- Shorter waiting time
- Surgery can be scheduled to fit into the lifestyle needs of the donor and recipient.
- Transplants from living donors have a 90% to 95% success rate.
- Such transplants have greater longevity than those from deceased donors.
Since l998 we have offered living donors the option of a laparoscopic approachLaparoscopic surgery involves the use of a small video camera and very thin surgical tools, allowing the surgeon to work with very small incisions for removal of the kidney. This approach, although not suitable for all patients, offers some advantages in shortened recovery time and wound healing. In addition we have initated several innovative treatment protocols to enhance patients' ability to receive a living donor transplant even when they are blood type incompatibleBlood Type Incompatability: Recipients are at risk for an immune reaction in the body if the donor and recipient blood types are different. or have a positive crossmatchPositive Crossmatch: A crossmatch test involves mixing the recipient’s blood with the donor’s blood. If the recipient’s antibodies react against the donor’s cells this is called a positive crossmatch, which means the recipient is disposed to rejecting the kidney immediately following transplant..
About Living Liver Donation
Living donor liver transplants have been performed in the United States since l989 and at UVa since l999. The majority of these procedures have been done in children using a smaller portion (usually the left lateral segment) of the liver. Because of the growing need for adult livers, however, larger portions (total right or total left lobes) have now been removed for transplantation.
Similar to the kidney population, there are advantages to receiving a living liver transplant as opposed to a receiving a liver from a cadaveric donor. The living donor transplant can be scheduled electively and before the onset of life-threatening complications from end stage liver disease in the recipient. As with all surgical procedures removal of the donor liver does involve some risk to the donor. Potential donors, therefore, will be meticulously screened for potential health risks both physically and psychologically by our Donor Advocacy Team.