People with defective organs or who have survived car accidents often rely on the generosity and kindness of loved ones or strangers for blood and organs.
For donors of vital organs such as kidneys, there has always been concern that the remaining kidney might fail or that the extraction process might go wrong.
But according to research published in the American Medical Association and conducted by a team led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the risk of death from having a kidney removed for a transplant has fallen by half compared to a decade ago and is much lower than it was in the 1990s.
By 2022, there would be only one death for every 10,000 donors, the team reported in its research, after evaluating three decades of medical records for nearly 165,000 people.
Deaths are very rare.
“Our results indicate that donor deaths are extremely rare, and the procedure is safer than ever,” said Alan Massé, director of the Quantitative Surgical and Transplantation Research (C-STAR) Core at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
Male donors with a history of high blood pressure are at higher risk if they donate a kidney, a procedure that leaves less of a scar than it once did.
“Surgical methods have changed dramatically since the 1990s, with open nephrectomy, in which surgeons make a 6- to 8-inch incision to remove the kidney, almost completely replaced by laparoscopic nephrectomy,” the team said.
This less invasive option, which uses a camera inserted through a thin tube, allows the organ to be removed through a much smaller incision.