subject: How To Use Facts To Find The Best Kidney Transplant Center For You [print this page] The facts on kidney transplant centers help you narrow down your options to the better ones. On the flip side, facts can be overwhelming or difficult to understand. However, knowing which key most telling facts to look for, how to find them and how to compare them to clarify next steps will help you find the best kidney transplant center for you.
When thinking of facts, don't panic. You don't need to know everything; just the few key numbers that most affect your odds at a successful kidney transplant. You need to know the facts on the transplant center success, experience and wait. The success a center has achieved over and over again over the past five to six years speaks to the odds that your own kidney transplant will be a success if you go there. This is because if more patients do well at a center, the more likely you will too. A center's experience speaks to the variety of cases they can handle successfully. Though there are exceptions to this rule, the more patients they treat the more likely they have handled difficult cases and the more likely they will be able to manage anything unusual in your care. Finally, the wait can be double at some centers than others and some patients have to stay on the list for more than 5 years. You are more likely to get a kidney faster at a center with a shorter wait.
Finding these facts can be a challenge. In my interactions with patients I found that many ask the transplant centers they are considering and also search the web. Asking the transplant centers does not let you to compare across centers. This is because each center's patients are different, some take healthier and others sicker patients. Those with healthier patients would then appear to have better success rates when in reality, when faced with sicker patients their success rates would be worse. That's why you need a single source for all transplant centers that adjusts success rates for the types of patients each center treats. Web searches for facts are also challenging. Your searches can pull up sites with no facts on individual kidney transplant centers or sites with a bunch of incomprehensible numbers designed for experts. To get more specific information, search with targeted keywords such as "kidney transplant centers", "best kidney transplant centers", "kidney transplant success rates", "success at kidney transplant centers" and "kidney transplant centers waiting list".
Finally, comparing the success, experience and wait at the kidney transplant centers you are considering is the necessary step to narrow down your options and clarify your next steps. When you compare you are looking for transplant centers that have the best success, highest experience and shortest wait. This is the ideal, which may not always be achievable. For example, some of the most successful transplant centers may attract so many patients that their wait times are very long. In that case, you have to make trade-offs: either travel to another area to find a center with both high success and short wait or multiple list at several centers to increase your access to more kidneys.
As you can see knowing what key facts to look for, how to find and compare them gives you confidence and directs you to the best kidney transplant center for you or your loved one. With the facts you don't chose blindly. But keep in mind that facts cannot stand alone. You do need to discuss them with your doctor and also follow up with an orientation at the transplant centers you narrowed down. Use them as your starting point and you will have the best options to discuss with your doctor at your next visit.
