When Mary Legass donated a kidney to her 20-year-old niece in 2000, she had worries about what the donation would do to her own health.
"When you're a donor, sometimes you think, ‘Am I doing the right thing? What's going to happen to me?'" she tells CTV Toronto.
But in fact, she's enjoyed a decade of good health since her surgery, lots of activity and best of all, happy times with her niece.
"Nothing has changed in my life. I still do my sports, I go out with friends, I haven't changed the way I eat," says Legass.
Now, new research finds Legass' experience is pretty typical of live kidney donors.
A study by Johns Hopkins University researchers found that for most of those who have donated one of their two kidneys to someone who needed it, the surgery carries very little medical risk. In fact, live kidney donors live just as long as people who have never donated a kidney.
The study, published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at more than 80,000 Americans who have donated a kidney over the last 15 years. The researchers found that the long-term risks were low.
The highest risk of death came within 90 days of the surgery, they found. Over the course of 15 years, there were 25 deaths within 90 days of live kidney donation. The risk of death among donors was 3.1 per 10,000 donors, compared to a matched group of non-donors, who had a death rate of 0.4 per 10,000 persons.
But within a year of the surgery, the risk of death among donors was about the same as healthy people.
And after 12 years, long-term mortality was also similar – in fact, it was even lower: only 1.5 per cent of donors had died after 12 years, compared to 2.9 per cent among similar people who had not donated.
Those death risks have held steady even as the number of live donor kidney transplants in the U.S. have nearly doubled over the past 15 years, the researchers note.
"Surgical mortality did not change during the 15-year period, despite differences in surgical practice and donor selection," the authors write.
The researchers say their findings confirm what doctors have long believed: kidney donation saves the life of the recipient, but poses little risk to the donor.
"Donating a kidney is safe," says transplant surgeon Dr. Dorry L. Segev, and associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"While there are never any guarantees with surgery, donating a kidney is safer than undergoing almost any other operation."
Segev notes that the risk of death from gallbladder removal surgery is roughly six times higher that live kidney donation. And the risk from non-donor kidney removal -- because of cancer or another medical reason -- is approximately 260 per 10,000 cases.
The authors note that live kidney donors are carefully screened, and are typically in optimal health.
Still, there are risks inherent to surgery, which can include infection, allergic reaction to anesthesia, collapsed lung or blood clots. The research revealed certain kinds of patients appear at higher risk of complications leading to death.
Men had a statistically significantly higher risk of surgical death than women did. Black patients also had a higher risk than white and Hispanic patients. Donors with high blood pressure also had a statistically significantly higher surgical death risk than did donors without hypertension.
"Although many healthy adults are eager and willing to accept the risk of donor nephrectomy [surgical removal of a kidney] to help their loved ones, the responsibility lies within the medical community to quantify these risks as best as possible and to make this information available to those considering donation," the authors write.
While patients with mild kidney disease can often survive for long periods on medication and dialysis, a kidney transplant is considered the best way of treating severe disease and offers the best chance of a more normal life.
Receiving a kidney from live donor is considered the best option, since success rates for transplants from a deceased donor are not as high. The success rate from a living donor transplant is 90–95 per cent after one year and the transplanted kidney typically lasts 15 to 20 years.
According to the Kidney Foundation of Canada, about 70 per cent of those on organ donation waiting lists are waiting for a kidney.
With a report from CTV Toronto's Pauline Chan
