Does Donating A Kidney Impact A Donor's Heart? - Major National Study Will Follow 400 Patients To Find Out

Main Category: Transplants / Organ Donations
Also Included In: Urology / Nephrology
Article Date: 02 Jun 2007 - 1:00 PST

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

Tie in - The first kidney transplant was in June, 1950*** The number of people who are stepping forward to donate a kidney has shot up over 60% in the last 10 years.* Thanks to those living donors, transplant patients can lead relatively healthy lives.

But what about the donors themselves? A few small studies have suggested that those who give a kidney might get a slightly higher risk of heart disease. Now, a massive nationwide study is underway to see how big and how real that risk to donors really is.

Still recovering from their surgeries, Kristin Renker and Christopher Jones have to take it easy. So while they build up their strength, together they build puzzles. Christopher now has one of Kristin's kidneys, which she gladly gave him… but with a few reservations for herself.

"My father had high blood pressure, he recently passed a couple of years ago. My mother has high blood pressure and I hear it runs through the family," says Renker.

Doctors know that genetics alone could put Kristin at a greater risk for high blood pressure. What's not as certain is how much her risk has gone up because she's a donor.

"We do know that from retrospective and small-scale studies that about 30% of donors will develop high blood pressure," says Todd Pesavento, MD, at Ohio State University Medical Center.

Dr. Pesavento isn't convinced those numbers are certain. He says not only did those previous studies look at a small number of donors, but they were all retrospective â€" meaning they were only done after the surgery. So he's part of a new study involving a handful of hospitals across the country that will do it differently.

"There have been very few prospective studies to ensure that donors remain with normal kidney function so we'll look at a total of 200 pairs of patients and we'll study their kidney function very carefully," says Dr. Pesavento.

Unlike the other studies, this one will last at least three years. With 70,000 people waiting for a new kidney,* Dr. Pesavento says it's crucial for donors to understand if there are risks beyond surgery, and to have every piece of the puzzle in place before they decide to donate.

This year more than 6,000 people will donoate kidneys. Doctors hope to nail down exactly what kinds of risks donors might face. This study is being funded by the National Institutes of Health.

*Donors Recovered in the US by Donor Type, Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network, www.optn.org
**Kidney Transplantation Facts, National Kidney Foundation, www.kidney.org
***Transplanted Kidney, Time, July 3, 1950 click here

Ohio State University Medical Center
June 2007
http://www.medicalcenter.osu.edu

• Additional
• References
• Citations