Article showing that kidneys from older donors perform acceptably attract attention
Results from a paper published in the journal "Transplantation" - entitled "Kidneys from deceased donors more than 75 years perform acceptably after transplantation" - has attracted considerable international attention. As a consequence, first author Axel Foss from the Section of Transplant Surgery is interviewed about the findings in the "Research highlights" column in the September issue of the prestigious "Nature Reviews Nephrology", under the headline "Transplantation: Kidneys from old donors: tackling the organ shortage".
Excerpt from the article "Transplantation: Kidneys from old donors: tackling the organ shortage", published in the "Research highlights" secion in Nature Reviews Nephrology, September 2009:
"Kidneys from deceased donors aged over 75 years, which are often discarded solely due to the donor's advanced age, should be considered for older recipients, according to results from two studies published in Transplantation.
"Because of a rising incidence of end-stage renal disease there is a growing discrepancy between availability of and the need for donor kidneys," states Aksel Foss, lead author of one of the studies. Extending the selection criteria to include older donors could increase the number of available transplants. Although survival of kidney grafts from older donors is worse than that of kidneys from younger donors, kidneys from older donors might still improve the quality of life of patients on waiting lists for kidney transplantation."
Links:
Transplantation: Kidneys from old donors: tackling the organ shortage
Richards L
Nature Reviews Nephrology 5, 488 (September 2009)
Kidneys from deceased donors more than 75 years perform acceptably after transplantation.
Foss A, Heldal K, Scott H, Foss S, Leivestad T, Jørgensen PF, Scholz T, Midtvedt K.
Transplantation. 2009 May 27;87(10):1437-41.
Section for Transplant Surgery
Division of Surgery