Altruistic Kidney Donation

There are two ways to get a kidney transplant: (a) find one yourself in the form of a living donor--typically from a friend or relative, or (b) wait for 3-5 years for a cadaveric to become available.

There's a third option which is apparently becoming increasingly popular: altruistic donation. There are some individuals in society who wish to donate their kidney anonymously to somebody who needs it. Ethically, this is accepted as an option given that for the most part, patients can get by with a single kidney very well provided they don't have any other health problems (e.g., high blood pressure, diabetes, etc).

We just transplanted two patients with altruistically-donated kidneys in the past few weeks. The recipients of such kidneys (taken from the waiting list for cadaveric kidneys) are actually quite lucky given that kidneys from living donors often last much longer than kidneys from cadaveric donors.