BACKGROUND The benefits of live donor kidney transplantation must be balanced against the potential harm to the donor. Well-designed prospective studies are needed to study the long-term consequences of kidney donation. METHODS The "LOng-term follow-up after liVE kidney donation" (LOVE) study is a single center longitudinal cohort study on long-term consequences after living kidney donation. ...

OBJECTIVE The National Organ Transplant Unit (NOTU) of Trinidad and Tobago, first implemented in January 2006, was mandated to facilitate renal and corneal transplantation. Since then, 60 transplants have been performed utilizing living kidney donors. The aim of this study is to ascertain the typical donor profile and to highlight the safety involved with live kidney donation. SUBJECTS AND ME...

Kidney transplantation, particularly from a living donor, is considered the treatment of choice for selected patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). A successful transplantation not only provides a better quality of life but also a survival advantage to the transplanted patient [1]. The superior results which can be achieved with kidney transplantation from living donors and the limited s...

Terminal kidney patients are faced with lower quality of life, restricted diets and higher morbidity and mortality rates while waiting for deceased donor kidney transplantation. Fortunately, living kidney donation has proven to be a better treatment alternative (e.g. in terms of waiting time and graft survival rates). We observed an inequality in the number of living kidney transplantations per...

BACKGROUND The waiting list for kidney transplantation is long. The creation of "vouchers" for future kidney transplants enables living donation to occur when optimal for the donor and transplantation to occur later, when and if needed by the recipient. METHODS The donation of a kidney at a time that is optimal for the donor generates a "voucher" that only a specified recipient may redeem lat...

BACKGROUND Over 5,000 living kidney donor nephrectomies are performed annually in the US. While the physiological changes that occur early after nephrectomy are well documented, less is known about the long-term glomerular dynamics in living donors. METHODS We enrolled 21 adult living kidney donors to undergo detailed long-term clinical, physiological, and radiological evaluation pre-, early ...

Almost one-third of transplanted kidneys come from living donors, who sacrifice approximately 30% of their pre-donation glomerular filtration rate (GFR) after they experience compensatory hypertrophy and hyperfiltration in their remaining kidney. Although hyperfiltration can cause glomerular injury, many studies have suggested that donor nephrectomy itself does not cause long-term loss of GFR a...