Donating one of your vital organs to someone else might sound like an impossibly huge act of altruism. But more people do it than you might realize.
In 2019 the MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute in D.C. performed 110 living donor transplants and the institute’s director said that she’s never met anyone who regretted doing it.
“I’ve done wives who then get divorced from their husbands — there are all kinds of stories — and not once have I had a donor who says that they regret donating,” said Dr. Jennifer E. Verbesey.
Verbesey is the director of the Living Donor Kidney Transplant program at the MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute, the surgical director of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant program at MedStar Georgetown Hospital/Children’s National Hospital and an assistant professor of surgery at Georgetown University Medical School.
The wait for a transplant involving just a cadaver kidney is three to six years, according to Verbesey.
But live kidney donations are preferred because they tend to work faster and last longer. And there are benefits for live donors.
“The National Kidney Registry (NKR) has a program where, if you donate a kidney, you can designate five people in your family,” said Verbesey. “If any of them need a kidney along in the future, they’ll have a special voucher to get a kidney.”
The voucher does not move them to the front of the line, but it will help.
“They’ll be on the line to get a living donor, whereas otherwise, they may only be on the line to get a deceased donor.”
You do not need two kidneys to lead a normal, healthy life; some people are even born with just one kidney.
And although people with failing kidneys can survive undergoing dialysis, there are risks.
“Risk of cardiovascular disease goes up extremely, their risk of infections [increases] and many other problems,” Verbesey said.
The procedure for the donor is minimally invasive, involving a 6-centimeter incision along with two or three tiny additional incisions for instruments used to perform the surgery.
Most donors spend one night in the hospital, Verbesey said. They feel a little pain and bloating for a few days, but after one week feel much better, and after two weeks they may feel almost back to normal, Verbesey said.
But donors should plan to stay out of work for three to four weeks if they can because they will feel tired for a while.
“After surgery, you can walk, you can jog, you can do a lot of things. We just ask you don’t do any lifting using your abdominal muscles for a few weeks,” Verbesey said.
An organ recipient’s insurance pays for the procedure. Donors can receive $1,500 per week in wage reimbursement.
“We have a lot of programs now, partially through the NKR, that can provide lost wages for people and transportation expenses and lodging expenses. There’s a lot of great programs out there now, so being a donor does not affect people financially the way that it used to,” Verbesey said.
Unlike with some other organs, donor and recipient kidneys do not have to be a perfect match.
“We have a very, very extensive program of doing swaps and exchanges,” Verbesey said. “We also work in a national system so that we swap kidneys all over the country.”
You can learn more about being a live kidney donor at the National Kidney Foundation website.
