Living Kidney Donor Program

UW Health surgeons perform transplant procedures working with living donors for kidney transplants. Advantages to living donation include a scheduled procedure, better conditions for the surgery, improved patient survival and better long-term function of the transplanted organ.

Living organ donors fall in one of two categories. The first and most prevalent consists primarily of relatives or close friends of the organ recipient. Transplants involving relatives have proven to be the most successful over time because of the blood relationship between donor and patient.

An increasingly popular form of living donation is altruistic, non-directed organ donation, in which people donate organs without a specific recipient in mind. Non-directed donation organs are distributed the same way deceased donor organs are - via the UNOS waiting list.

 

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