The Wacky World of Kidney Transplant

I'm starting to really enjoy the world of kidney transplants.

For one thing, it's simply the lesser of two evils. When your kidneys stop working, you see, you have one of two options. The first is to go onto dialysis, the kidney machine. Patients tend to dislike this, because it involves having to get hooked up to a machine for about 4 hours, three times a week. The second is to get a kidney transplant. The NIDDK (National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases) website publishes statistics on the overall survival of each option:

Dialysis survival (probability of patients surviving, from day 91 onwards):
at 1 year: 77.7% survival
at 2 years: 62.6% survival
at 5 years: 31.9% survival
at 10 years: 10.0% survival.

Patient survival following living-donor kidney transplant:
at 1 year: 98.2% survival
at 2 years: 95.8% survival
at 5 years: 95.5% survival
at 10 years: 70.6% survival

Patient survival following deceased-donor transplant:
at year: 94.3% survival
at 2 years: 91.1% survival
at 5 years: 81.2% survival
at 10 years: 59.4% survival.

You'll notice that the survival rate for patients on dialysis is pretty dismal: well over half are dead by 5 years! In contrast, patients who receive a living kidney transplant (say, if your brother or sister donates a kidney to you) have the best survival rate (nearly 96% by 5 years) whereas patients who receive a deceased-donor transplant (for example, somebody died in a car crash and is an organ donor) still have a not-too-shabby 81% survival rate. These numbers are perhaps a bit misleading, since in general it's the healthier patients who are chosen to get transplants and the sicker patients who often have no choice but dialysis--but in general the data is sufficiently convincing that kidney transplant is far, far superior to getting dialysis.

P.S. Happy 2nd Wedding Anniversary to myself and Claire!