Who Can Be a Donor?
Of the 300+ renal transplants that are performed annually at UAB, roughly one third are from living donors. Living donors can be actual relatives, spouses, or friends of the potential recipient. Interested individuals must be in good health, without any history of high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, severe lung disease, or other systemic illness.

After the complete inpatient medical evaluation determines the donor is acceptable, the surgery is scheduled at a time convenient to both donor and recipient. In the case of living unrelated donors, a 3-6 month period of reflection is often requested to ensure all parties are committed to the transplant and feel comfortable with the procedure and its risks and benefits.

How to Start the Process
The first step in being considered as a living donor is to contact the Transplant Office to be screened by a pre-transplant coordinator. If appropriate, arrangements will be made for the necessary blood tests. Once it has been determined that donor and recipient are compatible, an inpatient evaluation will be scheduled. During this 3-day hospital stay, the prospective donor will undergo extensive evaluation to determine that he/she is in excellent overall health with normal kidney function and kidney anatomy suitable for the surgical procedure.

The Donor Surgery
All donor operations are performed by an Attending Urologist at UAB. The traditional surgical procedure entails a 3-4 day hospital stay, with anticipated time away from work 4-6 weeks, depending on the physical demands of the job. UAB now offers an alternative surgical procedure for donation, the laparoscopic donor nephrectomy. Individuals who undergo this operation are hospitalized approximately 3 days, and are back to work in 2-4 weeks. Suitability for this procedure is determined during the inpatient evaluation, and donors must meet the criteria for the laparoscopic procedure. Specifically, the donor not be significantly overweight, must have essentially symmetric kidney function, and must have the vascular anatomy suitable for the surgical procedure.