Older patients can donate kidneys, study finds
The thousands of people waiting for a new kidney may find hope in a new study that finds older people can safely donate the organs.
Johns Hopkins doctors found that kidney transplants performed using organs from live donors over the age of 70 are safe for the donors and help save lives of those who recieve them.
Although the study found that kidneys from older donors were more likely to fail within ten years of transplant when compared with kidneys from donors ages 50 to 59, patients who received older donated kidneys were no more likely to die within a decade of transplantation than those whose kidney donors were between 50 and 59.
“A lot of people come up to me and say, ‘I wish I could donate a kidney, but I’m too old’,” Dr. Dorry Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “What our study says is that if you’re in good health and you’re over 70, you’re not too old to donate a kidney to your child, your spouse, your friend, anybody.”
Segev acknowledged that “it’s better if you have a younger donor. But not everyone has a younger donor. And an older live donor is better than no live donor at all.”
The research looked at records from 219 living people over age 70 who donated a kidney in the United States between 1990 and 2010. The team matched those donors with healthy people in the same age group and found that the donors actually lived longer than those who had both of their kidneys.
More than 90,000 patients are on the waiting list for kidneys from deceased donors in the United States, and many die waiting for an organ to become available. In some parts of the country, the wait for a kidney can be as long as 10 years, and those who can often turn to living donors, both relatives and friends, to ask for organs.
People can function normally with one working kidney.