To test this idea, Mohan and his team reviewed 975 kidney transplants that occurred at Columbia University Medical Center between 2005 and 2009.
Kidneys from living donors provided the best outcome for patients, with 91 percent still working five years after transplant regardless of whether the organ was damaged, the researchers found.
Living donors undergo intense screening to make sure they are healthy enough to donate a kidney, Mohan explained. In addition, kidneys from living donors are not damaged during organ preservation and transport.
“You should take a living donor kidney regardless of anything else you know about that living donor,” Mohan said. “It’s always going to be better than a deceased donor kidney.”
But high-quality kidneys from deceased donors functioned well, with nearly 82 percent still working after five years, the researchers found.
Surprisingly, most lower-quality kidneys also remained viable for nearly as long as the best kidneys, with 73 percent still working five years after transplant, the study showed.
By eight years after transplant, 62 percent of optimal kidneys and 53 percent of suboptimal kidneys from deceased donors still functioned, Mohan said.
The findings were published online July 6 in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
