A technique for presenting risk and outcome data to potential living renal transplant donors

Transplant centers have become increasingly interested in living donor kidney transplantation and have always had the obligation to counsel these donors fairly. Counseling techniques vary markedly among centers and can include overly qualitative or unintentional but covertly prescriptive presentation of risk and benefit.

We describe a simple technique using preprinted fields of stick figures for presenting important risk and benefit data to potential renal donors. We also suggest an approach to formulating basic statistics for donor counseling.

Risk and benefit statistics can be presented visually and quantitatively in a way that minimizes the need for donor sophistication and also displays the "all or nothing" nature of adverse events in donor and recipient populations, as opposed to using of percentages or prescriptive phrases by the donor counselor.

Such stick figure field counseling for living renal transplant donors accurately provides information to both donor and center, appropriately facilitates center impartiality, and may increase the center's and the donor's confidence in the counseling process.