News broke that a transplant kidney had been accidentally thrown away and ruined at the University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC) days before my mom’s kidney stone surgery.
“Great,” I thought. She was going to a different hospital, but a mistake in the same city so close to her surgery date made me nervous. Additionally, it involved the same organ, although at least it wasn’t a transplant.
But how common is it for a kidney to become compromised en route to the recipient anyway? Should we decline being listed as organ donors on our driver’s licenses if medical (or human) error is possible? Is it even worth thinking about becoming a living donor like at UTMC where a man donated to his sister only to have the kidney accidentally discarded by a nurse?
When I called the National Kidney Foundation in New York and talked to spokesman Sean Roach, he was aware of the UTMC incident and referred me to the immediate past president of the National Kidney Foundation.
The news was reassuring.
A kidney being compromised during a transplant surgery “is reported very rarely,” said Dr. Bryan Becker, who is the chief medical officer at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System.
“Donors should feel very confident that their kidney will be handled successfully and expertly and placed into the recipient in as ready a time frame as possible,” he said in an email.
The National Kidney Foundation also offered some compelling reassurance on the overall success of transplants.
“Medication and medical advances have resulted in transplant surgeries today that are very successful, in fact as high as 95 percent. The transplantation of vital organs has become routine surgical operation and is no longer experimental,” the website stated.
Last year, 16,812 kidney transplants took place in the United States. Of those, 11,043 kidney transplants came from deceased donors and 5,769 came from living donors.
Becker said organ donation benefits both the recipient and the donor.
“Not only is there altruism in action, but a lifesaving effort is present and interestingly, data suggest that donors historically have led healthier lives than age-matched controls,” he said.
If that doesn’t make you want to reconsider any hesitation toward kidney donation, check out these somber stats from the National Kidney Foundation:
- Nearly 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month.
- Every day, 18 people die while waiting for a transplant.
- Last year, 4,903 patients died while waiting for a kidney transplant.
- Every 10 minutes someone is added to the transplant list.
So I ask, “Should we hesitate to donate just because one brother’s sacrifice went awry?”
