Kidney Donors 

Any healthy adult can donate a kidney, regardless of relationship to the recipient. Some transplant centers have specific age ranges (e.g., twenty-one to seventy-five).

Direct donation: You donate directly to your intended recipient. This can be a spouse, relative, friend, coworker, acquaintance, or someone you know of but have not met personally. Most direct donations are done with the donor and recipient in the same hospital. However, there is also the option of remote direct donation, which is when the donor is at a different hospital than the recipient. The organ will be transported from the donor to the recipient hospital using the same infrastructure that is used for paired donation. This is typically done when the donor lives far away from the recipient’s transplant center and wishes to be evaluated and to donate at a local donor hospital.

Paired donation: You are donating on behalf of your intended recipient, but not directly to the recipient. A paired donation has been arranged, and your intended recipient will receive a living donor kidney from a different donor. This can be done simultaneously—the donor and recipient have the surgery on the same day—or by advanced donation—the donor donates first, and the recipient gets a voucher, which entitles the recipient to get a living donor kidney at a later date. In the latter case, the donor and recipient have surgeries on different dates and can be each other’s caregivers.

Nondirected donation: All donors are altruistic, however, there is a special category of donors who don’t have a relative or friend who is in immediate need of a transplant. They show up at a transplant center or on a kidney paired donation webpage saying, “I would like to donate my kidney” without a specific recipient in mind. This is not dissimilar to a patient showing up at a blood bank willing to donate blood anonymously. The National Kidney Registry offers nondirected donors the opportunity to sign up for a family voucher program. These donors can register their close relatives (typically up to 5) as potential recipients of a living donor kidney should they ever need a transplant in the future. This program was developed to ease the concerns of nondirected donors who may worry that they are giving up an organ that a child or spouse may need in the future.

Donors must be in good general health, with normal kidney function and suitable kidney anatomy. The donor evaluation process determines if the donor can donate safely.

Any condition that will put the donor or the recipient at increased risk for complications may prevent donation. These conditions can include diabetes, obesity, uncontrolled high blood pressure, cancer, and certain types of heart, lung, or liver disease. The best way to find out if someone is a candidate to be a kidney donor is to apply directly to a transplant center, or through one of the living donor facilitating organizations such as NKR. The transplant center will let you know if you qualify. However, transplant centers sometimes vary in their eligibility criteria. A donor may be denied at one program but approved at another one.

A thorough evaluation assesses physical and mental health. Separate teams evaluate and care for living kidney donors and transplant recipients.

Donors have the right to withdraw from the process at any time without pressure.

Kidney donation is a very low-risk procedure. This is primarily because all donors are low-risk surgical candidates who have been thoroughly evaluated and approved by a donor program. However, like any surgery, there is always a small risk of complications, such as wound infection, incisional hernia, bleeding, blood clots, and anesthesia complications. Today, almost all donor surgeries are done with minimally invasive techniques, laparoscopically or robotically.

The typical hospital stay is one to three days.

Recovery varies by individual and job requirements. Most donors feel recovered in two to three weeks. However, those who have jobs that require significant physical exertion may need up to six weeks to return to work.

Donating a kidney does not shorten a donor’s lifespan, and the long-term risk for kidney or any other disease is not higher than in the general population. The risk of death from donating a kidney is extremely low.

Medical costs for the donation are paid by the recipient’s insurance. Costs such as travel, housing, and childcare are borne by the donor, although there are resources available to cover these expenses through NKR’s Donor Shield program and the National Living Donor Assistance Center.

Donors may lose wages during recovery and should check with their employer about paid leave or short-term disability. Getting reimbursed for donation-related expenses, including lost wages, is perfectly legal. Getting paid for donating a kidney is not.

The decision to donate a kidney can be stressful, and the anxiety before donation, as well as the normal discomfort and recovery after the surgery, can bring complex emotions. Donors are encouraged to have a support system and consider their emotional expectations.

Yes. After recovery, donors can expect to have a normal life.

You will take a small amount of medication for a brief time to help you recover from the surgery. This will mostly be pain medication and stool softeners to prevent constipation. There is no need for long-term medication, unless you were on it before the donation.