The webcast will highlight the outcomes from the March 29-30, 2012, Kidney Paired Donation Consensus Conference.

The health and safety of the living kidney donor is a critical responsibility of every transplant center that performs live donor transplants. This responsibility reaches a unique level of complexity in the setting of multi-center kidney paired donation (KPD). KPD donors will most often not know or even meet the actual recipient of their gift. Therefore, the donor’s conceptualization of their gift may be different than if they knew the actual recipient. The consent process must acknowledge this added challenge and extra care must be taken to ensure donor privacy. Additionally, there may be unique barriers to KPD participation among potential donors, recipients, and transplant programs. For instance, it is estimated that only one-tenth of KPD-eligible donor-recipient pairs choose to participate in this type of program.

The primary objective of this consensus conference was to identify and recommend best practices related to living kidney donor education and evaluation processes, communication processes, attenuation of participation barriers, and donor follow-up care in the multi-center KPD setting.

Learning Objectives:

After viewing this webcast, the participant will be able to:

Understand alternative KPD allocation systems currently in use
Learn challenges unique to KPD in terms of donor evaluation, geography, financing, histocompatibility, and implementation
Examine future directions for KPD allocation

Alan Leichtman MD

University of Michigan

Appearances