'Repaired' kidneys could ease organ shortage
- 29 March 2008 by Rachel Nowak
- Magazine issue 2649
IT IS a grim dilemma: spend years more on a kidney transplant waiting list, and possibly die before you ever reach the top, or accept a diseased organ that has been patched up.
With the wait for healthy kidneys standing at two to six years in the US and Australia, and 16 years in Japan, two surgeons have been quietly transplanting diseased kidneys from living donors, who have had a kidney removed because of a small cancer or some other disorder. The organs are first repaired, for example, by removing the cancer, before being transplanted into someone with kidney failure.
Since 1991, a team led by Makoto Mannami of Uwajima Tokushukai Hospital in Ehime, Japan, has transplanted "repaired" kidneys into 42 patients whose average age was 50. Five years later, 79 per cent of them were still alive (American Journal of Transplantation, DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-6143.2007.02145.x).
Meanwhile, an Australian ...