Kidney transplant a beneficial option

Kidney transplant is better than being on dialysis.

Dr. Nerissa Jurawan stated this as she spoke during the Rotary Club of Barbados’ weekly luncheon that took place yesterday at the Hilton Resort.

Jurawan highlighted some of the key advantages of kidney transplant, which included longer survival, a better quality of life and a huge cost benefit for patients with end stage renal disease.

She stated that research revealed that patients with a successful kidney transplant actually lived longer than patients that remained on both types of dialysis, adding that a live donor transplant lasted between 10 to 20 years or longer.

Data from the US Renal Data system reported that patients who were on dialysis did not survive as long as patients who received a transplant.

“It seems like a global problem. We are spending more and more of every health budget on chronic diseases, and dialysis is extremely expensive, in Barbados we cannot cope with what we are seeing, we don’t have enough resources to dialyze enough of the patients that we are seeing,” she said.

“So kidney transplantation saves money when compared to dialysis and that money that we are saving we can use to help more patients with kidney chronic disease because the dialysis is not a sustainable long term solution for chronic kidney diseases so we need to gear more of our resources towards transplantation.”

She pointed out that like every surgery there were risks involved in transplant, however, the benefits outweighed the risks and patients were usually monitored closely to ensure that any complications were picked up and treated immediately.

“Research has shown that with these types of complications, it is still better to have a kidney transplant compared to remaining on dialysis,” she said.

Dr. Jurawan assured that any healthy adult would be able to donate a kidney, adding that the donor did not have to be of the same gender, blood relative or husband and wife.

So far, the transplant success story in Barbados is doing well, and they have done 10 successful transplants with the help of the Transplant Links Team.