Outcomes of Interest to Living Kidney Donors

Abstract

Purpose of this Review: The decision to donate a kidney requires potential donors to accept a range of possible risks and benefits of donation. Decision-making and informed consent should include explicit consideration of outcomes that are relevant and important to donors. Research and practice may not address some outcomes that are of importance to donors. We describe living kidney donor priorities and perspectives on outcomes and discuss implications for including their priorities in research, practice, and policy. Recent Findings: The outcomes important to donors, from their perspective, include kidney function, time to recovery (defined as time taken to return to usual activities and physical and psychological functioning), surgical complications, impact on the family, quality of the donor-recipient relationship, life satisfaction, lifestyle restrictions, kidney failure, mortality, and pain or discomfort. In comparison, frequently reported outcomes in trials and observational studies of living kidney donors tend to be short-term process, surgical, and clinical outcomes. Clinical follow-up of living kidney donors typically focuses on hospital readmission, kidney failure, hypertension, diabetes, mortality, and kidney function. Summary: Efforts to align research, practice, and policy with living donor priorities for outcomes may strengthen approaches to informed decision-making and consent, increase donor satisfaction, and inform strategies and interventions to improve outcomes for donors.