Approach to the Pretransplant Evaluation of the Living Kidney Donor.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Transplantation Volume 2011, Article ID 245738, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2011/245738 Review Article Approach to the Pretransplant Evaluation of the Living Kidney Donor Mala Sachdeva,1 Madhu Bhaskaran,1, 2 Ernesto P. Molmenti,2 Donna Dalton,2 and Joseph Mattana1 1 Division of Kidney Diseases and Hypertension, Department of Medicine, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, Great Neck, NY 11021, USA 2 Department of Surgery, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, Manhasset, NY 11030, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Mala Sachdeva, msachdeva@ Received 30 September 2011; Accepted 4 November 2011 Academic Editor: Gian Luigi Adani Copyright © 2011 Mala Sachdeva et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Evaluation of the potential kidney donor is a complex activity that differs substantially from other types of preoperative assessments. The well being of the donor, who derives no medical benefit from this surgery, must be assured in both the short term and long term, and the potential adverse consequences to the recipient must be determined as well. The criteria that must be met for a person to donate a kidney are rigorous and include medical, social, psychosocial, ethical, and legal issues. Donor evaluation can be divided into assessments to protect the health and safety of the donor and assessments to protect the health and safety of the recipient. This article provides an approach to evaluating a donor, focusing on the complex issues that an evaluator is faced with. A careful asse