The Transplant Team at University Hospital recognizes that patients considering kidney transplantation have many questions. This brochure is designed to help you understand kidney transplants and prepare you to discuss this critical subject with your family, friends, and health care professionals. Kidney transplantation involves surgically implanting a donor's kidney into a person whose own kidneys have permanently failed due to injury or chronic end-stage renal disease. When a person's kidneys permanently stop excreting waste products and body fluids, chronic end-stage renal disease occurs. Kidney transplantation is one method of treating this disease.
Dialysis is another commonly used treatment.
Brain death, or the determination of death by neurological criteria, is the irreversible cessation of all functions of the brain. In the event of brain death, consent for organ donation is obtained from the donor's family or next of kin. Artificial support keeps the donor's other organs functioning until donation occurs. Since there is a nationwide shortage of organ donors, patients who need cadaveric kidney transplants usually go on a waiting list. A national computer must consider many factors when matching these potential recipients with appropriate cadaveric donor kidneys.