A General Evaluation on Kidney Transplant

If the kidney disease develops into uremia, the toxins will be accumulated in our body and can not be discharged, which even can threaten our life. So far, the common therapies western medicine adopts are dialysis and kidney transplant. Then what are the advantages and disadvantages of kidney transplant respectively?

The two main advantages of kidney transplant:

1 Besides the high expenditure, long-term dialysis also can cause various complications. Compared to dialysis, kidney transplant is a more effective method regarding saving uremic patient's life.

2 After the operation, patient's renal function will restore quickly. There will not is much limitation on diet. Patient's quality of life will be improved.

The main disadvantages of kidney transplant

1 Complications
Infection: kidney transplant operation is a large vascular and genitourinary surgery, so after the operation, patient's immunity will decline momentarily. The adoption of immunosuppressive medicine will cause infections of different parts, like lung infection, urinary tract infection, wound infection and so on.
Cardiovascular complications: after the kidney transplantation, the cardiovascular will be the second reason which threatens patient's life. It contains hypertension, heart failure, hyperlipidaemial and so on.
Complications of digestive system, like upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage, acute pancreatitis.
Endocrine and metabolic abnormalities, like hypercalcemia, hypophosphatemia, renal tubular dysfunction, hyperuricemia and so on.
Complications of blood system, like polycythemia, the change of blood rheology.
The relapse of kidney disease: some years later after the kidney transplantation, patients may get kidney disease again and the common one is the relapse of primary disease.

2 The long-term survival rate after operation is low.
At present, most medical institutions just aim at the success chance of surgery and pay little attention on survival rate and quality of life. The main factors which threaten patients' life are medicine toxicity, cardiovascular disease, viral infection and exclusive reaction.
Cardiovascular disease has been the top factor endangering kidney transplant patient's life. About 50% of them die of cardiovascular disease which is mainly caused by hypertension and hypercholesterolemia after the operation. Some experts suggest that 25%-40% of kidney transplant patients will present renal function decline, proteinuria, progressive anemia gradually. In addition, some patients are not suitable for kidney transplant.