Being part of a transplant group is an important thing for our current modern medical field. It gets hard to obtain organs for the tons of patients who need urgent care. One main organ that is on demand all the time is the kidney. The best part about the kidney is the fact that even living humans can donate one kidney and continue their life with the second one alone.
However, a recent study conducted by a team from the American Society of Transplantation’s Kidney-Pancreas Community of Practice (AST-KPCOP) Cardiovascular Disease Workgroup has shown that taking care of kidney transplant patients is much more important than any aspect of the process. The study reveals that poor care for kidney donors tend to lead to complications due to them not being used to the new lifestyle.
These complications might add a lot of pressure on the available kidney, creating many different diseases. This study was published in the Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation Journal by lead author, Prof. Denis Fouque who works in the Centre Hospitalier Lyon Sud, France and the Vice-Chairman of the European Renal Best Practice group of ERA-EDTA; together with being a member of the KDIGO Advisory Board.
He comments on the study saying, “Transplantation aftercare is now focused primarily on preventing organ rejection and the side-effects of immunosuppressive therapies. Early diagnosis and management of cardiovascular disease is a secondary focus at best and due to complex interactions between traditional risk factors, immunosuppressive medications and chronic kidney disease, a traditional approach to cardiovascular disease management is inadequate.”