End-stage chronic renal failure
There are many different causes of chronic kidney failure. Whatever the cause of the kidney failure, you cannot survive without functioning kidneys. However, many people live perfectly well with kidneys that are functioning less than one hundred percent. Once kidney function deteriorates beyond a certain point, the loss of function tends to become progressively worse.
When your kidneys can no longer sustain you, this function can be performed by long-term dialysis. Many people on dialysis, although not all, are suitable candidates for a kidney transplant.
If both kidneys need to be removed
Sometimes an otherwise healthy person needs to have both kidney
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s removed. An example of when this would be necessary is severe trauma (injury) to both kidneys. Someone like this would be a good candidate for a transplant.
Most potential transplant recipients will be on a dialysis programme while they wait for a suitable kidney to become available. People on a transplant waiting list need to be prepared to come into hospital at short notice. The waiting list of a transplant programme is usually held in a central location which covers the whole country. Once a kidney becomes available for transplantation, a scoring system is used to determine the best recipient of that specific kidney.
Various systems are used but most include factors such as length of time on the waiting list, accuracy of the match between donor and recipient blood groups and tissue typing, and the relative ages of donor and recipient. If a kidney that is harvested (removed from a donor) in a certain region cannot be used within that region, then it will be offered to patients outside of that region.
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