Kidney failure need not bar donation

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Kidneys recovered from deceased donors with acute renal failure appear to work just as well when transplanted as other kidneys, U.S. researchers found.

The study, published in Surgery, found as long as the donor kidneys were still producing urine and did not have evidence of scarring they could be successfully transplanted.

"While kidneys from deceased donors with acute renal failure have been considered unusable in the past, our study shows they can work quite well," study senior investigator Dr. Robert Stratta of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., said in a statement.

Stratta and colleagues transplanted 25 kidneys from 17 deceased donors with acute renal failure. Unlike chronic kidney failure, acute renal failure may result from reversible causes such as trauma, medication, or dehydration and these kidneys appeared to restore to a healthy condition when transplanted.

"Now that we know we can successfully transplant these kidneys and they will work just as well as other deceased donor kidneys, it becomes a decision of personal preference -- the transplant center's level of comfort with using these kidneys, the patient's preference with accepting the kidney and the general public's decision on whether or not to donate life," Stratta said in a statement.