Living donors, including relatives and friends, can donate a kidney.  In our experience, transplants function successfully from related and unrelated living donors.

Living Donors Can Be:

• Blood relatives of the recipient, including parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins.  These donors are referred to as living related donors (LRDs).
• Emotionally-related to the recipient, but not a blood relative, including a spouse, friends and co-workers.  These donors are referred to as living unrelated donors (LURDs).
• Altruistic.  These are individuals who are interested in donating a kidney but do not designate a specific recipient.  These are living unrelated donors (LURD).  In our program, an altruistic donor can start a chain of living donations that may help more than one recipient (refer to donor exchange program).

Currently, we expect approximately 96 percent of the kidneys we obtain from both living related and living unrelated donors to be functioning at one year.  At three years, 96 percent of related donor kidneys and 91 percent of unrelated donor kidneys maintain their function.  Recipient survival is also excellent, i.e. 99 and 98 percent respectively for related and unrelated donor kidney recipients at one year and 98 and 97 percent at three years.

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Advantages Of Living Donation:

The results of living donor kidney transplants are excellent.   These excellent outcomes, well above 90 percent of transplanted kidneys functioning at one and three years, are almost the same for recipients who receive kidneys from both living related and living unrelated donors.

Additional advantages of receiving a kidney from a living donor include:

• Transplant surgery can be planned and scheduled to optimize the donor and recipient’s schedule.  When it becomes evident that the recipient will need a transplant, arranging for living donation, a preemptive transplant, may obviate the need for dialysis treatment.
• Living kidney donations take people off the deceased donor list and allow those without living donors a greater chance of acquiring a deceased donor kidney.

Many prospective recipients who come to be evaluated with a willing, living donor, find that they and their donor are incompatible.  Typically this means that the recipient has antibodies directed against their donor, or that the two are blood group (ABO) incompatible.  In either case, immediately going forward is not an acceptable decision because of the increased likelihood of transplant rejection and failure.  The Rogosin Institute has programs available for incompatible donor-recipient pairs, offering these potential recipients an individualized program that will enable them to go forward and have a successful kidney transplant.