On the occasion of European Organ Donation Day, the Biomedicine Agency is launching its new information campaign aimed at publicizing kidney transplants from living donors and their excellent results.
“A donation in me, for kidney transplant from living donor” is the slogan of the brand new educational campaign initiated by the Biomedicine Agency (ABM). Launched this Saturday, October 12 on the occasion of the European Day of Organ Donation and Transplantation, this campaign national information system aims to increase awareness of living donor kidney transplantation and its excellent results among healthcare professionals, patients, their families and the general public.
The best treatment for end-stage renal disease.
According to the Biomedicine Agency, even today, kidney transplantation from living donors remains insufficiently practiced. Not only are patients and their loved ones still often unaware of this solution, but medical teams also still do not offer it enough. However, when it is possible, a kidney transplant with a living donor is the best treatment for end-stage renal disease. For the ABM, it is necessary today to inform the public at large so that this treatment becomes a solution considered in the same way as the transplant from a deceased donor. In June 2012, the Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS) thus recalled that “early and complete information to patients and those around them is an essential prerequisite for the development of the transplant from a living donor. However, access to this information seemed insufficient in France ”. Indeed, informing as early as possible allows the potential donor and the recipient to gradually mature their decision.
Donate an organ while you are alive without reducing your quality of life
Even if the transplant from a deceased donor remains for the moment the most developed in France, the transplant from a living donor is developing gradually. The problem is that poorly or not informed, the public maintains a number of preconceived ideas that this national information campaign aims to dispel. Indeed, the ABM recalls that a living, voluntary and healthy person can donate a kidney to one of his relatives under the conditions defined by law without reducing his quality of life. If, like any medico-surgical act, the kidney removal involves a risk, it is very minimal in the long term, the physical health of the donors is excellent. In France, data on the health of donors have been recorded since 2004 by the Biomedicine Agency. The majority of complications recorded in this register concern cases of mild and transient problems. The most common are: pain in the scar.
A kidney that works better and longer
But the donation of the living presents a last significant advantage for the recipient. When the donor is a perfectly compatible brother or sister, this makes it possible to reduce the anti-rejection treatment and to hope for even better results in the very long term. The transplanted kidney starts to function faster than when it is a transplant from a deceased donor. Finally, about 3/4 of the grafts taken from a living donor are still functional 10 years after the transplant. In 2002, Alexandra gave a kidney to her sister Audrey, she testifies on the Agency’s website: “In my daily life, it hasn’t changed anything. I even surprised myself every now and then completely forgetting that I only had one kidney. I do a lot of sports, and it hasn’t changed anything in my practice. We went so well that we can’t say anything other than if we can do it and if we want to, we must do it. ”
Source: YouTube
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