3 Things To Look For In Your Kidney Transplant Center
If you are considering a kidney transplant, think about the kidney transplant center you go to
. You can choose where to go. Medicare and private PPO insurance cover most of the 246 kidney transplant centers in the US, and if you do have these types of insurance you can go to any center near you, near a relative or across the country.
The choice of your kidney transplant center is one of the first and most important decisions you will make on your journey to a kidney transplant. This is because their results with kidney transplantation will affect your own odds for a successful transplant. The better a center is and more of their patients do well, the more likely you will do well too.
How do you then find the best kidney transplant center for you?
1. Look at their success
2. Do not let size fool you
3. Look at their wait
1. Look at kidney transplant center success
How many of their patients live long: Patient survival rates are different at different kidney transplant centers. Patients who go to some of the below average centers face two times the risk of death three years after their transplant compared to those who go to better centers. Though no one can predict your own life expectancy after a kidney transplant going to a better center that lowers your mortality risk improves your chances for a longer life.
How many of their transplants last: Kidney transplants don't last for ever but they can last for 10 or even 30 years. How long they last not only depends on the patient and his/her health condition, but also on the kidney transplant center. Each center has different ways of following up their patients after their transplant. They also follow different protocols for managing necessary medications after surgery. All these practices combined lead to differences in how long patients at each center keep their kidney. In fact, the gap in the transplants that fail within 3 years between the best and worst centers is from a low of 11% at the best center to a high of 25% at the worst. This means that if you go at one of the worst centers you could be the one out of every four patients whose kidney transplant fails after 3 years of surgery. If you go to one of the best centers you cut your risk of losing your kidney by half.
How well they manage complications: Complications after kidney transplantation are primarily due to the body attempting to reject the new kidney as something foreign. The many medications patients need to take to manage these rejection episodes also cause complications. To prevent and manage these complications, all transplant centers follow their patients regularly for a year after their kidney transplant. However, what they do during this follow up is very different from center to center and this affects the complication rates their patients experience. In fact, kidney transplant centers are most different in this area: Patients who go to the worst centers experience complications 59% of the time while those who go to the best only 26% of the time. This means that if you go to a better center, you double your chance of living a healthy life outside hospitals.
2. Do not let size fool you
Bigger does not mean better: Many patients and even doctors assume that a larger kidney transplant center is better. The logic behind this is that if a center does more kidney transplant procedures, the more practice and experience it gets. This is true up to a certain point. If a center does many transplants but it does not have enough doctors and nurses to care for so many patients the attention for each patient decreases. The result is that care suffers and the results at that center get worse. There are centers that do hundreds of kidney transplants but their success is not the best or it is even among the worst.
Small can be good too: At the other end of the spectrum, many patients and doctors may ignore a smaller center because they feel that it does not have enough experience. However, there are centers that do 13 kidney transplants a year and their results are among the best in the country, consistently year after year.
3. Look at their wait
Some can get you a kidney faster: If you do not have a living donor you will have to get on the waiting list of a kidney transplant center. You will wait for a kidney from someone who passed away and the family decides to donate the organs. While your wait time depends on your blood type it also depends on the kidney transplant center too. The wait list is longer at some centers than others, depending on how many patients the center has and how many donors it gets. The average wait time can be more than double from center to center: From 17 months to 41 months.
Compare these factors at the kidney transplant centers near you, centers your doctor recommended or even centers you can travel to. Comparing your options side-by-side will give you confidence in your final transplant center choice and peace of mind that you are in the best hands possible for your kidney transplant.
by: Constantia Petrou
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