| jsanders00@gmail.com 2006-06-30, 9:25 pm |
| Transplants: For Kidneys, Age Matters Little
By ERIC NAGOURNEY
Doctors should not put too much emphasis on the age of kidney donors or
recipients in deciding whether a transplant make sense, a new study
suggests.
Researchers from Wake Forest university Baptist Medical Center in
Winston-Salem, N.C., say the success rate of their transplants does not
appear to be affected by age. The findings were presented last week at
a
meeting of the Central Surgical Association in Tucson.
Until fairly recently, older age was often considered sufficient
grounds
to reject either a donor organ or a recipient.
The findings, based on a review of 144 transplants a year or more after
surgery, have bearing on who should be considered good candidates for
kidneys.
"A lot of people never even consider transplant as an option because
they think they are too old," said the lead researcher, Dr. Robert J.
Stratta. "And they're really not."
But the study also suggests that doctors should think carefully before
rejecting kidneys from older patients - an important finding, given the
long lists of people waiting for a new kidney.
The key, the authors said, is to go beyond looking just at tissue and
blood type in matching a donor and recipient. Doctors should also
assess
the level of function of a kidney, which tends to decline with age, and
the needs of a patient.
So a younger person who does not weigh very much, for example, may be a
good candidate for an older kidney that is not working at full
capacity.
"If one places a high-risk kidney into a high-risk recipient," the
researchers wrote, "then it is not unexpected that the resulting
high-risk transplant is associated with inferior outcomes."
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