How can you donate a kidney to your spouse?

In the beginning, living donor transplants were only done between identical twins. While this worked very well, not many people have the convenience of an identical twin for a kidney donor. Next, the field was expanded to include close relatives, such as parents, siblings, aunts and uncles. These relatives usually have some genetically matching antigens which help reduce the risk of rejection.

Today, with a much broader understanding of transplantation and better drugs, we can do transplants from living unrelated donors. This includes spouses, friends, coworkers and even in some cases, altruistic strangers. Having matching antigens is less important than it used to be, which has made this life-changing procedure available to a much larger number of people. Comedian George Lopez received a kidney transplant from his wife.

Spousal transplants have remarkably good outcomes. A spousal transplant with no antigen matches has the same survival as a deceased-donor transplant with six antigen matches! So love really is good medicine.

-Rob


Here's an article about it:

Terasaki PI, et al. High survival rates of kidney transplants from spousal and living unrelated donors. N Engl J Med. 1995 Aug 10;333(6):333-6.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/333/6/333