A very good friend of mine has an inherited kidney condition that will lead to his needing to go onto dialysis or receive a transplant, probably in the next 2 years. Several people have offered to be tested as potential kidney donors. I know that family members have the best chance of being a suitable donor, but that’s not an option here.
What kind of testing is needed to determine if any of us are a match?
What exactly is it that is being matched?
There are two main pre-requisites to being a donor:
2 your “tissue type” should match as closely as possible to the recipient’s
In terms of tissue type, this refers to the HLA-antigens, a set of chemicals on your body’s cells that govern how your immune system responds to, and perceives as, “foreign” tissues.
HLA testing is done by examination of your blood and requires just providing a blood sample.
Interestingly, it is not essential to have the same blood type (ABO) in order to be a donor.
Kidney transplant recipient here.
There are 6 factors in the tissue-typing that are done to match for transplant. Higher-quality matches are preferred for obvious reasons, but as the quality of immunosuppressant medication has improved dramatically since the kidney transplant was perfected, it is technically possible to be a donor even with a 0 of 6 match.
However, the worse the match, the more immunosuppressants you must take. Immunosuppressants have the side effect of, among other things, damaging kidney tissue. What a choice, huh?
When KarlGauss says that the donor must be healthy, specifically this means that the donor does not have any infectious diseases (notably cancer and HIV) that will be transmitted to the victim. Patients who are diabetic are ruled out as donors (for their own safety, I imagine). IV drug use is also a factor at most facilities too, I would think. Good health as a requirement obviously means that the donor’s circulatory and respiratory system are sufficiently strong to enable him to endure an operation of a few hours.
More can be found here at the Mayo Clinic website regarding donor qualifications. Precise details (such as the availability of the smaller-scar laporoscopic donor surgery procedure) should be gotten from the facility where the transplant will take place.