How well do kidney transplants work? Dr. Tom Peters, a transplant surgeon from Florida, says this:
If we were to take 100 dialysis patients today, transplant them with a good kidney, and look at them a year from now, 50 will have done extremely well. They will have gone home from the hospital, had no complications, tolerated their meds, had no additional hospitalizations, good renal function, and their kidney will last 10 to 20 years.
Thirty-five are going to have some problems: new onset of diabetes, heart attack, complications, re-operation, hospitalizations, rejection. At the end of a year, those 35 patients will join the first group. Most of them will be healthy, have normal or near-normal kidney function, and will keep their kidney for a long time (maybe not as well as the first group).
That leaves 15 patients. From 2 to 4 will die in the first year—usually beyond three months post-transplant—from a heart attack, stroke, infection, or other cause. The remaining patients will have had some loss of transplant kidney function, or will have had to return to dialysis. The reasons for kidney function impairment or loss in the first year include rejection, infection, technical or surgical problems, medicine reactions, recurrence of original disease, and other causes. Most patients who lose transplant kidney function will be able to receive another transplant.
Why Would My Body Try to Reject My New Kidney?
Your body's immune system works like a national defense system. When foreign invaders get into your body, your immune system acts to reduce the threat to your safety. Since the new kidney was not yours, your immune system sees it as a foreign invader and tries to reject it.
People who get transplants take drugs every day to suppress the immune system and prevent rejection. These drugs are called immunosuppressants.
