Patient-Reported Outcomes Following Living Kidney Donation: A Single Center Experience

This article describes the development and implementation of an initiative at one transplant center to annually assess psychosocial outcomes of living kidney donors. The current analysis focuses on a cohort of adults (n = 208) who donated a kidney at BIDMC between September 2005 and August 2012, in which two post-donation annual assessments could be examined. One and two year post-donation surveys were returned by 59 % (n = 123) and 47 % (n = 98) of LKDs, respectively. Those who did not complete any survey were more likely to be younger (p = 0.001), minority race/ethnicity (p < 0.001), and uninsured at the time of donation (p = 0.01) compared to those who returned at least one of the two annual surveys. The majority of donors reported no adverse physical or psychosocial consequences of donation, high satisfaction with the donation experience, and no donation decision regret. However, a sizable minority of donors felt more pain intensity than expected and recovery time was much slower than expected, and experienced a clinically significant decline in vitality. We describe how these outcomes are used to inform clinical practice at our transplant center as well as highlight challenges in donor surveillance over time.