Understanding the Kidney Transplant
By Daniel Yan Having a kidney transplant is often the last ditch effort to save the life of an individual whose kidneys have failed and no longer process waste products in the body. Statistics reveal that a total of about 9,000 kidney transplants occur every year from cadavers and about 3,000 transplants occur from living related donors. Living unrelated donors account for 9,000 transplants per year. Sadly, there are more than 56,000 individuals waiting for kidney transplants at any given period of time. The first successful kidney transplant was done in 1954 in both Boston and Paris. These were kidney transplants done between identical twins which don't have problems with rejection. The biggest problem was tissue typing--finding a suitable match for the recipient and making sure that rejection is kept to a minimum. This is why many donors are relatives who are a good match or living donors who are a good tissue typing match for the recipient. Living