St. John Kidney Transplant Services has provided patients a new lease on life since the medical center’s first kidney (renal) transplant in 1994. Since then, more than 200 patients have received kidney donations through our comprehensive transplant program.
Kidney transplant offers a higher quality of living, with increased mobility, a feeling of well-being, an increase in energy and a more normal lifestyle. St. John offers both deceased and living donor renal transplants to patients with end-stage renal disease.
Patients are cared for by an experienced team of professionals, including:
• Transplant surgeons
• Nephrologists
• Clinical coordinators
• Social workers
Our kidney transplant program receives organ donations via LifeShare Transplant Donor Services of Oklahoma Inc., a private, not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization certified and designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to recover organs for transplantation in all 77 Oklahoma counties.
How do I begin the process of getting a kidney transplant?
Your doctor will discuss the transplant process with you or refer you to a transplant center for further evaluation.
Factors in the Donation Process
When an organ is donated from a person who has died, it is made available to an eligible patient on the waiting list. Before the transplant can take place, however, several things happen.
1. The local organ procurement organization (OPO) gathers information about the organ - size, condition, blood and tissue type - and sends this to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS is a national organization that operates the patient waiting list, assuring equal and fair access for all patients to organs for transplantation.
2. A patient on the UNOS list who is most qualified for the organ - due to waiting time, blood and tissue match, and other factors - is selected and his or her center is notified.
3. Although a patient meets all the criteria and appears to be a good match for the organ, the organ still has to be accepted by the transplant center. The transplant team has a very short time to consider several factors before accepting an organ for a particular patient. If, in the physician's judgment, the organ offered presents undue risks to the patient, it may be refused. There are a number of reasons for refusing an organ, such as:
Patient condition. The patient may currently be too ill to undergo surgery. Or, the patient may be out of town or otherwise unavailable for surgery at that time.
Donor condition. The donor might have had high blood pressure , diabetes or some other illness that might have harmed the donated organ.
Organ condition. If an organ has been outside the donor's body for too long, it may not work as well and, therefore, may not help the patient. Or, the organ may have been damaged during recovery from the donor or during transit to the transplant center. Sometimes, final examination of the organ shows previously unseen risks, such as too much fatty tissue or badly formed blood vessels.
Donor/recipient compatibility. Critical "matching" tests, performed just prior to surgery, sometimes reveal unknown incompatibilities that would result in failure of the transplant.
Transplant center factors. Geography may be a factor, as it may not be possible to get the organ to the center within a desirable amount of time. There are some differences among transplant centers overall in terms of how often organs are accepted or refused. But recent studies have found that how often a center accepts or refuses transplant organs does not seem to affect important factors, such as how long patients wait for (a) transplant or how well those patients do either before or after (a) transplant.*
* From the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS') Summary of Key Findings 1113197. The UNOS 1997 Report on Center-Specific Organ Acceptance Rates.
For More Information
Please call the St. John Kidney Transplant Program
(918) 744-3542
Other Resources
Click here to access Lifeshare Oklahoma, the official state organization dedicated to recovering organs for transplantation in all 77 counties of the state of Oklahoma.
