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Washington, DC (September 1, 2016) -- A new study finds some shortcomings by the transplant community in providing prompt access to transplantation for living kidney donors who later develop kidney disease and need a transplant. Donors are told that they will have priority for transplantation if they ever need a kidney, so any delays in providing this access must be addressed. The study's results appear in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).
Jennifer Wainright, PhD (United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS) and her colleagues examined how consistently living donors get transplant priority in a timely fashion, using information from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), which includes data on all donors, wait-listed candidates, and transplant recipients in the United States. UNOS is the private, non-profit organization that manages the nation's organ transplant system under contract with the federal government..
Among the major findings:
"We found that most prior living kidney donors on the kidney waiting list are transplanted quickly, but some spend periods of time waiting in inactive status. Others wait weeks or months on the waiting list without priority access, which must be requested by their transplant hospital," said Dr. Wainright. "UNOS has developed procedures and education that aims to reduce these delays in the future."
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Study co-authors include Anna Kucheryavaya, MS, David Klassen, MD, and Darren Stewart, MS.
The authors reported no financial disclosures.
The article, entitled "Delays in Prior Living Kidney Donors Receiving Priority on the Transplant Waiting List," will appear online at http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/ on Sept. 1, 2016, doi: 10.2215/CJN.01360216.
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Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology