Why should we implement living donation in renal transplantation?

Renal transplantation started with living donor transplants. However, after the introduction of cyclosporine, the improved results of kidney transplants from cadaveric donors have raised controversy regarding the use of living donors. There are various reasons as to why some transplant centers tend to refuse living donation: first of all, the possibility that unilateral nephrectomy can be harmful to a healthy individual.

By reviewing the medical literature on the various aspects of living donation, postoperative mortality in connection with living donation has been calculated to be 1:3,000.

Long-term follow-up investigations of donors demonstrated that the risk of progressive renal failure, hypertension, and proteinuria was not increased by nephrectomy per se, but other causes were responsible for that in occasional patients. From these studies, one can conclude that unilateral nephrectomy is not harmful to a healthy individual. In addition, there are other valid reasons to expand living donation: 1) the need for cadaveric donor kidneys for transplantation far exceeding the supply; 2) the better kidney quality from living donors due to the shorter ischemia time, the lack ofagonal phase and cytokines release that follows brain death; 3) the continuing improved results of kidney transplants from living donors in comparison with those from cadaveric donors in the cyclosporine era also. This appears to be true also for kidney transplants from unrelated living donors in spite of complete incompatibility with recipients. 4) Pre-emptive transplantation, based on living donors, not only avoids the risks, cost, and inconvenience of dialysis, but is also associated with better graft survival than transplantation after a period of dialysis, particularly within the live donor cohort.

In conclusion, living donor transplants should be part of any transplant center's activity. To encourage living donation, every center should have a formal recipient family education program in conjunction with national organ donation campaigns.