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Best Practice Kidney Transplant

Research and Resources

GET THE FACTS!

digital image of kidneys inside human body

Over the past two decades, researchers have conducted significant research and created numerous resources that outline best practices recommended for kidney and transplant care, yet it is up to each individual hospital to decide whether they will adopt any of these strategies. Patients and living donors can play a role in helping to advocate hospitals work to implement these best practices.

It’s important that everyone knows the facts about kidney and transplant outcomes as well and best practices recommendations that is supported by the literature. Help us spread the word! The following list details important research and resources supporting best kidney care practices. The Alliance will update this list as the research is published and resources are created.

If you’d like to help advocate for these or other best practice strategies, please contact info@kidneyalliance.ca to learn how you can get involved.

Important Data from Research and Resources:

  • Living donor kidney transplant is the best possible treatment for patients with kidney disease 1,2
  • Kidney Donation (living and deceased) can save the healthcare system billions of dollars – but it happening for only 10% of kidney patients. A trans­plant also costs the healthcare system less—over a 5-year period, every 100 kidney transplants save the healthcare system about $20 million in averted hospital-based dialysis costs (Canadian data).3,4,5
  • As the best possible treatment which only few kidney patients achieve, living kidney donor transplant should not be an elective surgery in Ontario or anywhere in Canada.
  • Working up more than one kidney donor at a time is proven best practice; it saves lives and money, but it is not happening at all transplant centres.6
  • A more efficient and timely evaluation of living donors saves lives and money. The average time it takes to work up a donor in Ontario is 10.3 months. Patients can make more informed choices about their care if they understand how their centre’s donor work up time compares to the average.7,8
  • In part because of inefficient donor evaluation processes and poor communication between renal and transplant programs, dialysis is often initiated for patients even when living donors are well under way in work up, leading to unnecessary transplant delays and complications for patients.9
  • To increase living kidney donation, there must be better financial and long-term medical supports in place for living kidney donors.10
Research and Resources:
  1. Pre-transplant maintenance dialysis duration and outcomes after kidney transplantation: A multicenter population-based cohort study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34897824/
  2. Systematic Review: Kidney Transplantation Compared with Dialysis in Clinically Relevant Outcomes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21883901/
  3. Canadian Institute for Health Information. Annual Statistics on Organ Replacement in Canada: Dialysis, Transplantation and Donation, 2010 to 2019, 2020. https://www.cihi.ca/en/annual-statistics-on-organ-replacement-in-canada-2012-to-2021
  4. The Cost of Care for People With Chronic Kidney Disease. //pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31057803/
  5. The Financial Impact of Advanced Kidney Disease on Canada Pension Plan and Private Disability Insurance Costs. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20543581177039
  6. “Evaluating multiple living kidney donor candidates simultaneously is more cost-effective than sequentially. https://www.kidney-international.org/article/S0085-2538(20)30712-2/fulltext
  7. “Duration of Living Kidney Transplant Donor Evaluations: Findings From 2 Multicenter Cohort Studies. https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(18)30126-4/fulltext
  8. Potential implications of a more timely living kidney donor evaluation. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajt.14732
  9. Initiating Maintenance Dialysis Before Living Kidney Donor Transplantation When a Donor Candidate Evaluation Is Well Underway.  https://journals.lww.com/transplantjournal/Fulltext/2018/07000/Initiating_Maintenance_Dialysis_Before_Living.31.aspx
  10. Economic consequences incurred by living kidney donors: a Canadian multi-center prospective study.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4285205/