The kidney acts like a body’s filter to remove toxins and ensures the right blood supply reaches the whole body. Since this is a crucial part of your body, extreme and appropriate care should be taken to ensure its health and functioning.
However, like all other body organs, the kidney is also prone to several medical issues. Some of them are acute and temporary while others are chronic and permanent. When your kidney suffers from a chronic disease, it leads to permanent kidney damage or failure.
A kidney failure is a medical condition when the kidneys become unable to filter out the blood properly and don’t remove toxins from the body through urine. Since flushing out toxins is vital for our body health, doctors recommend patients for a kidney transplant in the case their kidney stops working.
Here’s a comprehensive guide to kidneys transplant, procedures, and the risks involved. Continue reading to dig deep into this treatment.
What is Kidney Transplant?
A kidney transplant is a surgery that is done for dealing with kidney failures. The surgery can be expensive and is generally recommended when dialysis treatment is not a viable option for your concern anymore.
To be precise, people whose kidneys are not operational will have to for this type of transplant. In this, either or both the kidneys will be replaced with the donor’s kidney. The dorn can be either the dead person or the living.
A kidney transplant is mainly recommended to treat chronic kidney disease and help you feel better and live longer.
How is Kidney Transplant Performed?
A kidney transplant is a critical procedure that should be performed with extreme care. First of all, patients need to ensure whether they are healthy enough for surgery. The doctor first examines your overall health and only then allows for the procedure.
If you have passed the medical exam or a series of tests to examine your body health, the expert will then enlist your name for the kidney transplant.
Now, if you already have a person who is ready to donate the kidney, the doctor would schedule the transplant well in advance. But if you are waiting for a deceased donor who would be a close match for the type of tissue you are looking for, then you must have to wait for a while until the donor is found.
Once the donor matches with the patient, the surgeon would begin the process to place the donor kidney in the patient’s body.
- For this, the blood sample and antibody test would be conducted. If there is a negative crossmatch result the transplant would be initiated.
- To begin with kidney treatment, the patient and donor both will be given general anesthesia.
- Once both are asleep, the doctor would create an incision in the abdomen area and ensure the donor’s kidney is placed inside.
- The arteries and veins further would be connected from the kidney so there is a regular blood flow in the body.
- The doctor would also attach the new kidney’s ureter with the bladder so that the urination process also starts effectively.
Remember that a patient still can live a healthy life even with one healthy kidney. Post-surgery, the patient is required to be on immune suppression to ensure the immune system is not attacking the new organ.
What are the Risks Involved?
Since a kidney transplant is a kind of surgery, one needs to understand that there would be risks and complications involved in it along with some potential side effects as well. Talking of which some of the risks that you should be aware of are:
- Lack of kidney functioning temporarily: Your kidney may fail to work efficiently even after it is transplanted and you would have to rely on dialysis till the functioning gets back to normal. If you face any such trouble, then find the best dialysis center near me and seek immediate help.
- Rejection of the organ: This could be the least possible but if the body doesn’t accept the donor organ then there would be additional medications that the doctor would suggest so the body starts accepting the kidney.
- Kidney failure: This may not happen all of a sudden but after years, there is a possibility that the kidney may not function effectively and another transplant would be needed.
- Cancer: The Immunosuppressant medicines that are advised after the transplant would leave the patient more at risk of getting cancer disease.
- Other side effects: Also, there are some potential side effects such as weight gain, blood clots, and infection which are commonly noticed post-surgery.
Summing it up!
That’s all about the Kidney Transplant procedure. We hope our in-depth guide will help you learn about the process and let you decide whether you should go for it or not. With such a surgical process, the person will no longer have to depend on dialysis treatment anymore.
It can further lead to living a regular healthy life. However, this process needs to be done with great care and the aftercare instructions should be followed properly too to avoid complications.