Kidney transplant patient tells of life changing operation

Oct 10 2009 by Hannah Davies, The Journal

How successful are kidney transplants?

DR Alison Brown, a renal consultant at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital says: “There are lots of different causes of kidney failure, from diabetes to genetic problems, to high blood pressure.

“The majority of kidney transplants are successful but they don’t all last forever.

“The best chance of success are from living donors, ideally family members, who share the same genetics as the patient, a mother or father for example.

“That is the ideal situation. Next to that are other living donors, for example a husband or wife.

“But many people don’t have living donors who are able to give them a kidney. In that case we look at the National Organ Donation list and the Transplant Matching Service.

“They try to put patients together with donors of roughly the same age to improve compatibility.”

Dr Brown says dialysis can be a difficult thing to undergo.

“A lot of patients feel very tired on dialysis,” she explains, “for hemodialysis the patient has to either be at home or the hospital for four hours, three times a day dialysing, for peritoneal dialysis this is often overnight.

“It takes out a huge chunk of your life and especially for people with a family that can be very hard, especially combined with the fatigue.

“With kidney transplantation that is all taken away. It quite simply transforms patients’ lives.

“People have their lives back again. They can do most normal jobs, they find they have energy back again, they can eat normal foods.These days we have the transplant games, people can exercise and participate in most activities as normal.

“They do only have one kidney so there are still precautions, but a normal life is usually the result of a successful transplant.

“The fact is if more people were signed up to the Organ Donor Register we would be able to carry out more transplants and more people would be able to live normal, transformed, lives again.”

The Freeman Hospital

NEWCASTLE’S Freeman Hospital is a national centre for transplants.

On average it carries out 110 transplants a year, but has around 230 people waiting for transplants on its books. Around seven of these are children waiting for a donation.

In 1987, the Freeman performed the UK’s first successful heart transplant for a child.

They are also one of Europe’s leading lung transplant centres, having performed both the first single lung transplant and the first double lung transplant.

Work has begun on a dedicated transplant centre at the hospital, this has been described as the first of its kind in the UK.

The £30m Institute of Transplantation at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital will include four operating theatres.

It is due to open in summer 2011, and the facility will eliminate the need to cancel other operations to make way for emergency transplants.

The institute will also include critical care beds, general ward beds and outpatient facilities.