Organs
Kidneys
Interactive Kidney
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The kidney is the body’s filtering system. It takes out poisons and waste products from the blood and produces urine to get rid of them. The kidneys are also important in maintaining a balance of fluid and salt and a normal degree of acidity. When disorders upset this delicate equilibrium, the kidneys act to restore balance by excreting more or less water, salt and hydrogen ions.
The kidneys help maintain normal blood pressure by secreting the hormone rennin and elaborating a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. When someone’s kidneys are not working because of disease or injury, the poisons and waste products build up in the blood. This causes serious health problems. If someone has serious kidney disease, he or she usually needs to have dialysis, which filters the blood through a machine outside the body. Or the person can have a kidney transplant.
What is kidney disease?
Kidney disease is a condition, which occurs when the kidneys cannot do their job of cleaning blood of toxins and waste products. Common complications of chronic kidney disease are high blood pressure, weak bones, anemia (low blood count), poor nutritional health and nerve damage. It also increases your risk of having heart and blood vessel disease. These problems are gradual in progression. But with early detection and treatment, chronic kidney disease can be kept from getting worse. If left undetected kidney disease eventually leads to kidney failure requiring dialysis or a kidney transplant to sustain life.
Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a growing problem. Currently, there are 65,000 people awaiting a kidney transplant. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of people with kidney failure requiring dialysis or transplantation virtually doubled to 380,000. If this trend continues the number of people with kidney failure will approach 700,000 by 2010. The annual cost of treating kidney failure in the United States has already topped $20 billion.
One in nine adults in the United States have kidney disease and another 20 million more are at an increased risk for the disease. Nearly half of the people with an advanced form of kidney disease aren't aware they have weak or failing kidneys according to recent research published by the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.
Early detection can help
Early detection can help prevent the progression of kidney disease to kidney failure. Hypertension causes kidney disease and kidney disease causes hypertension. To gain the best estimate of your kidney function doctors test a bodies' glomerular filtration rate. Certain groups of people are at higher risk for kidney disease.
- People with diabetes People with hypertension
- People with a family history of kidney disease African Americans
- Hispanics Pacific Islanders
- Native Americans Senior Citizens
Organ donation and transplantation facts
Although the success rates of transplant surgery are constantly advancing, the need for transplantable organs far exceeds the supply available for transplant. Many Americans who need transplants will die waiting for the ultimate gift...
The Gift of Life. Studies have shown that when the public understands the basic facts about donation, they overwhelmingly support it. By educating and dispelling common myths, we create a society that supports organ donation.
Nearly 4,000 new patients are added to the waiting list every month. 17 people die waiting for a vital organ transplant: heart, lungs, liver, kidney, pancreas, or bone marrow every day. 3,886 kidney patients died in 2004 due to lack of available donor organs in our country.
Where will the donated kidney come from?
Most often the donor is a member of your family, but sometimes, someone who is not directly related to you may be a possible donor. A healthy person can give a kidney to another person and live a normal life with only one kidney. If you cannot get a kidney from a family member, your name may be placed on a waiting list to get a kidney from a cadaveric donor. Even though the donor has died, the kidneys are still healthy. The family of the person who has died donates the kidneys to give someone the Gift of Life.
What happens during transplant surgery?
The transplant operation typically takes 3 to 4 hours. Most of the time your own kidneys stay in your body. An incision about 8 inches long is made in the lower abdomen. The blood vessels from the new kidney will be connected to your blood vessels. The ureter, the tube that carries urine from the new kidney is then connected to your bladder. The new kidney starts to produce urine immediately. In 2003, there were 15,129 kidney transplants and 871 kidney-pancreas transplants performed. During that time period, 3,334 patients died waiting for a kidney transplant and 191 patients died waiting for a kidney-pancreas transplant.
The Living Bank
The Living Bank is the oldest and largest organ donor education organization in the United States, and the only national organ donor registry that keeps computerized records of organ donor data for recovery in an emergency. The Living Bank cooperates at every opportunity with each segment of the organ donor and transplant community, supporting any group or organization whose activities generate more committed organ donors or facilitate actual organ donation. Other groups or organizations that encourage organ and tissue donation include:
- Other organ donor registries and groups, which educate the public about organ donation.
- Organ Procurement Organizations, which are federally franchised, actually procure donor organs by sending surgical teams into hospitals to take the organ for transplant while the recipient waits.
- Transplant centers located in authorized hospitals where actual organ transplants take place.
