Facts of Renal Transplantation

Kidney transplantation is replacing the damaged kidney with a healthy kidney to solve the problem of severe kidney damage. It is considered as the ultimate treatment of treating uremia nowadays.

The main problems of renal transplantation are success rate of surgery as match and survival time are not easily in control and high expense which makes many uremic patients step back.

Is renal transplantation the ultimate solution of uremia?

Of course it’s not because when kidney disease develops into uremia, it’s not only the kidney damage but the every system of the body has been damaged a lot, which is also why uremic patients have various symptoms. In this condition, only replacing a kidney can’t solve the problem because other systems can’t repair their damage.

Does this mean that renal transplantation has no point. Certainly not. But timing is very important. The perfect time for renal transplantation is decompensatory stage which is before uremia. At that stage, kidney disease can’t be cured but other systems are not damaged yet. So it’s the perfect time. But very few patients receive renal transplantation at that stage.

Do uremic patients have to take dialysis regularly and wait for renal transplantation?

Many uremic patients are told to receive dialysis regularly and wait for renal transplantation. But this is a negative approach and it lowers the kidney survival rate.

The proper treatment is to remove the immune complex especially toxins in blood first. Dialysis can only remove small-sized toxins and it’s far enough. So treatment should be combined with other blood purification methods such as plasma exchange.

Secondly, treatment should aim at improving blood supply to the kidney area and blood circulation to guarantee the survival rate. Patients after renal transplantation are required to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their life. Besides, even the surgery succeed, patients can’t be too optimistic or even indulge which may cause renal failure again.

Not all uremic patients can receive renal transplantation. Patients with diseases such as coronary heart disease and active hepatitis cannot receive renal transplantation. For uremia caused by polycystic kidney disease (PKD), renal transplantation has little point because PKD is genetic and it will probably recur even with suppressing the transplanted kidney.