Austin, Texas – About 90,000 Americans are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, according to the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.
The average wait time to get a kidney from a deceased donor is about three to five years, but it can be longer, and that's where living kidney donors make a big difference. New research shows it's safer than ever.
Dr. James Lim, Surgical Transplant Program Director at St. David's North Austin Medical Center, spoke with FOX 7 Austin's Rebecca Thomas.
Rebecca Thomas: Dr. Lim A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama) found that the risk of death for kidney donors has fallen by more than half over the past decade. Let's talk a little bit about the research itself. What were the researchers looking at?
Dr. Lim: Well, they looked at each decade for the past 30 years starting in 1993 and compared how safe inter vivos gifts were. I think we need to remember that before 1995, all living donors were done using the so-called open method. And I'll talk a little bit about what we've been doing as of today and even over the past 30 years or so. However, not only the mortality rate but also the mortality rate or probability of death has decreased, with the number of cases now resulting in death being just under 1 in 10,000 people over the past 10 years. That's really amazing. And I think that's a testament to all the doctors and surgeons who have been able to do these surgeries for so long and so well, and we've been able to piggyback on that.
Rebecca Thomas: Yeah. Therefore, becoming a living donor was relatively safe from the beginning. What advances have been made to make it safer?
more health beat story:
Dr. Lim: I think part of it is the fact that we're doing more. It is much more widespread. I think like anything else, the more you do it, the better you get at it. The other thing is technology. What's interesting is that when I was trying to look up the history of laparoscopic surgery, I was surprised to learn that it wasn't that long ago that laparoscopic surgery was introduced in terms of doing something by combining so-called minimally invasive surgery with open surgery. It was. And if you go back to the last three years, technology has really advanced and some amazing equipment has come out. The cameras we currently use are placed inside the patient's body to get a better look inside for the laptop procedure. And if I had a pen. Yeah. So this is my pen. It might actually be a little wider than my pen. The instruments we use to dissect the kidney are a little wider than that. In practice, however, the rate-limiting step is usually determined by the size of the kidney and, in some cases, the size of the donor's or donor surgeon's hands. So we can make a decision with a size of about six, six, half a centimeter. And this is a pretty amazing feat considering what we've done in the past for people called open donors.
Rebecca Thomas: Talk about the screening process to become a living donor. How far should we go to ensure that problems are less likely to occur in the future?
Dr. Lim: right. So when I see a potential donor, at the end of the day I say to them: What we want to know is, do you think you'll be okay with one kidney after all these years? That's what it means. That's what it comes down to. Therefore, the workup may seem extensive, as blood tests, urine tests, scans, etc. need to be done. However, it doesn't really take that long because, by definition, living donors must be healthy. If you don't, you'll be singled out quickly. So when we first did living donor transplants many years ago, our first successful living donor transplants were back in the '50s. Our criteria for what could be a donor was much more stringent because we didn't know what was a good element from a donor's perspective and what wasn't. Well, we've had enough time so far that we've done a pretty good job with the parameters and properties we've looked at.
Rebecca Thomas: Dr. James Lim of St. David's North Austin Medical Center; Thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise tonight.