With the advent of the laparoscopic retrieval of donor kidneys, recipients have doubled their chance of finding a willing donor, according to findings reported by the University of Maryland Medical Center.
"New evaluees in our program who have not previously considered the live donor option can now find a living donor in more than 50% of cases, compared with 25% previously," Stephen Bartlett, MD, and colleagues reported in the medical center's spring issue of Transplant Review.
In a study that evaluated 295 laparoscopically procured living donor kidney transplants performed between March 1996 and January 1999, survival of the laparoscopically procured grafts was as good as that of those procured with an open technique. One-year graft survival was 96% at the end of the study period, and the overall donor graft failure was 5%. Few of the graft losses were associated with technical or immunologic failures.
During the study, improvements were made in the laparoscopic technique, including using a stapler to reduce ureteral ischemia, using a harmonic scalpel to minimize heat generation, injecting the renal artery with lidocaine to reduce spasm, leaving the perinephric fat intact to reduce renal trauma, and placing the extraction incision suprapubically to ease deployment of the extraction bag.
Another study conducted at the medical center has found that the cost of a kidney transplant has dropped to the point that, for even the sickest patients, it is cheaper to have a transplant than to stay on dialysis for more than two and a half years.
"We found that the break even point was 2.7 years for all of the cases we analyzed. And, for 30% of our patients who did not need to be re-admitted to the hospital during the year after their transplant, the break even point was only 1.7 years," said Eugene J. Schweitzer, MD, who presented findings at the scientific meeting of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons in May.
For Your Information:
Transplant Review
abstract of laparoscopic donor study
http://www.umm.edu/center/specialties/departments/transplant/laparo.htmlTransplant News Network
related article
http://www.centerspan.org/tnn/97101504.htmUniversity of Maryland Medicine
news release on shrinking cost of kidney transplants
http://www.umm.edu/center/newspubs/newsreleases/kidcost.html
Please be aware that medical advice, diagnoses and physician references cannot be obtained from this site.