The psychosocial evaluation of live donors

Abstract

Live organ donation is an essential and thriving part of organ transplantation. The transplant community allows live donors to express their autonomy by taking risk to themselves to benefit the recipient and to help ease the ever-increasing waitlist. Medical and psychosocial outcomes for the first post-donation decade have been encouraging for kidney and liver donors. Lung, pancreas, small intestine, and uterine donations have also been studied, but to a lesser extent. Kidney donation remains the most common type of live organ donation with altruistic or non-directed donation from strangers growing. At present non-directed donation of other solid organs is controversial given the increased medical and surgical risk. This chapter will review the procedures to evaluate these unique candidates as well as the risks and outcomes of live organ donation. The psychosocial team is important in this process to ensure a careful selection of organ donors and positive donor outcomes.