Vos Iz Neias
Washington - More and more people are donating one of their kidneys to a loved one, a friend, even a stranger, and now a move is on to make sure those donors really fare as well as they’re promised.
Specialists insist the surgery rarely brings serious complications for the donor. What’s less certain is the risk of any long-term health consequences, in part because transplant centers can lose track of donors after they go home.
“Who’s taking care of the donor after the surgery? Really, no one is,” says kidney donor Krystal McLear, 32, of Indian Head, Md., who serves on a committee for the network that runs the U.S. organ transplant system.
The United Network for Organ Sharing is debating some new policies to change that. Among the proposals: A checklist for evaluating would-be donors and fully explaining the risks — plus requirements to better monitor those donors’ health and social stability for two years. Centers would have to track such things as the condition of the remaining kidney, and whether the donor has a hard time getting health or life insurance afterward.
There is reassuring data. A 2009 study from the University of Minnesota, for example, traced the records of nearly 3,700 people who had donated a kidney there dating back four decades. It concluded those donors lived a normal life span and were no more likely than the general population to suffer kidney failure later in life, probably in part because they were so super-healthy to start.
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