Kidney donors wanted

Press, 6 March 1984, Page 16

Kidney donors wanted

PA Dunedin More donor kidneys are needed, according, to the renal physician at Wellington Hospital, Dr P. J. Hatfield.

In an article on kidney donation in the latest “New Zealand Medical Journal,” he said that kidney trans plants were the best means of restoring a patient with kidney failure to normal living, as well as being the cheapest means of treatment at $7OOO for the first year and about $350 a year thereafter.

The yearly costs of the other alternatives being used in New Zealand include hospital haemodialysis

at $20,000 and home haemodialysis at $14,000. The 350 patients at present on dialysis programmes cost the health system $5.5 million annually.

Live donor transplants from a brother or sister or a parent are the most successful with 80 per cent of the grafts functioning at two years and a patient survival of 95 per cent. These patients have a fiveyear graft survival of 78 per cent.

Results from unrelated cadaver donors, although not as good, have improved dramatically in the past

three years, Dr Hatfield said. To obtain a sufficient supply of donor kidneys requires enthusiasm amongst the medical profession and education of the public, he said. “It is natural that doctors caring for seriously ill patients feel they haveenough to do in carrying out their clinical duties and sympathising with relatives,” said Dr Hatfield.

“It is easy to understand their reluctance to accept the additional, unpleasant task of discussing possible kidney donation with distressed relatives,” he said.

With the introduction of population-based funding, each hospital board is now paying for the dialysis costs in its region and there is therefore now a financial

inducement to harvest cadaver kidneys, he said.