An Investigation of Post-Traumatic Growth Experiences Among Living Kidney Donors.

More than 1 million patients are estimated to have undergone transplantation in the past years. In recent years, living-donor kidney transplantation accounted for more than 50% of all transplantations. Kidney transplantation from living donors is regarded as a contradictory case to the "do no harm" principle as a major surgical intervention is performed on a normal and healthy person at the expense of recovery of the organ recipient. The purpose of this study was to investigate positive psychological experiences, specifically post-traumatic growth (PTG), among living kidney donors. The sample consisted of a total of 184 kidney donors. The age of donors ranged between 21-76 (mean, 50.76; SD, 10.93). In this study 67.9% of donors were female. The recipients on dialysis group had higher scores than the recipients who did not have dialysis; the mean difference was significant on the subscales of change in life philosophy, change in relationships, change in self-perception, and in the PTGI score. The donors with higher education levels received higher scores on the subscale of change in relationships in comparison with donors with low education. The donors who were married and older than 51 years had higher scores than donors who were not married or younger on the subscale of change in self-perception. This is a single-center study; this center performs more than 500 kidney transplantations per year. There is a good system and experience at each step before and after transplantation for donor and recipient and relatives. It is a really big potential trauma to donate a kidney to your relative; you can change this negative effect to a positive effect with a good system. The present study also showed that when compared with the scale's absolute midpoint, kidney donors in the study sample experienced moderate-to-high levels of PTG.

Paired exchange kidney transplantation experience of Turkey.

OBJECTIVE: Paired-exchange kidney transplantation (PKD) has gained in importance because of the difficulty to obtain suitable organs. The aim of this study was to compare the biochemical and clinical parameters of PKT with those of living-related kidney transplantation (LD). METHOD: We compared 272 PKD performed in 3 transplant centers with 1885 LD. The 2 groups were compared for graft and patient survivals, rejection episodes, serum creatinine levels, and other biochemical parameters. RESULTS: The median human leukocyte antigen, mismatch was similar: PKD, 4 (95% confidence interval [CI], 3-4) and LD; 3 (95% CI, 3-4; P = .1292). The mean creatinine level among the PKT group of 1.07 ± .37 was lower then the LD group 1.17 ± .56 (P = .0043), but after the second year it was lower in the LD group (1.39 ± 0.61 and 1.16 ± 0.43; P < .0001). The rates of patient death (PKT, 3.31% vs LD 3.58; P = .9603), graft loss (2.74% vs 2.71%; P = .8647) and acute rejection episodes (19.48% vs 19.36%; P = 0.9719), were similar between the 2 groups. CONCLUSIONS: Paired donation expands the living donor pool and decreases the number of waiting list patients. It is cost effective according to ABO incompetible transplantation.