Non heart beating donors

[Mike]

Hi All,

I have to make a desision as to whether I would accept a kidney should one become available from a non heart beating donor. I don't know that much about them apart from my transplant unit is being encouraged to offer them by the government.

I would really appreciated your views and any information you can give me.

All I know is from a letter I received a couple of days ago and it was mentioned briefly when I went to see them about 6 months ago. In the letter it says that they would use a different set of drugs but it doesn't say what they are? From what I understand the 5 year survival rate is the same as for brain-stem dead donors.

I kind of get the impression that this letter has come from the management of the hospital not the unit and it is being forced upon them by the department of health.

Mike

[debbie]

I've heard of this but I don't think that it is common practice within my unit, however I remember something about St George's in Tooting being big on this. My concern would be the length of time between retrieval and transplant due to kidney's going to sleep. I don't know how I would feel though if offered a non heart beating donor but if the success rate is similar and more people benefit from this then maybe it would be a good idea.

[Julie]

Mike,

David and I went to a transplant presentation at his hospital earlier this year. The statistics they quoted were 95% of heart-beating donor kidneys were still working after one year, and 90% on non-heart-beating kidneys were still working after one year. These were the latest stats available and were from 2002.

His hospital offer you the choice of saying whether you want to accept a non-heart-beating kidney or not.

We asked David's neph about this afterwards and said that he would probably choose not to accept one because of the statistics. His neph's view was that David would be better off accepting the first kidney to come along because despite the statistics mentioned above, it would be worth the increased risk in order to reduce the strain on the rest of his system that dialysis puts you under.

He also said that over the last 2 years the transplant teams have learned much better how to preserve the kidneys so they stay in optimum condition and pointed out that at Leicester transplant centre, one of the leading centres in the UK, they are actually achieving the same level of success with non-heart beating kidneys as they are with heart-beating kidneys purely because they know better how to look after them now and are employing new methods and technologies to help them stay in optimum condition.

So David heeded that advice and chose to accept the first matching kidney no matter where it comes from.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Lots of love,
Julie
x

[JMan]

Hi Mike,

Julie's summary is pretty accurate. The topic of NHBD (as its known in the renal community) is a fairly active one at the moment.

You might want to get in touch with the NKF and ask what information they can provide. From both a patient group and medical point of view.
http://www.kidney.org.uk (email or call them)
Cheers

J