To ask a medical question

[cricketballs3]

Just catching up with Surgeons: At the Edge of Life with the little boy's kidney transplant and although I have heard this before re leaving the original kidneys in situ the only explanation was that it caused to much trauma to remove them - why given the 'trauma' the transplant recipient is already going under?

Can anyone explain in an easy to understand manner?

Removing them makes for a longer surgery/more time under anaesthetic and carries additional risks such as infection, bleeding, adhesions, etc. so it's less complicated to leave them in place.

Yes it's easier to graft the replacement into the blood vessels than clamp them all off and reattach if the kidney was removed altogether.

Thanks - another question! Why do the transplanted kidney only have an average life span of 15 years given it would last a full life time in the living donor?

I am in awe watching this series at the skills, especially with this episode given how tiny the vessels etc must be.

The transplanted kidney is not placed where the original kidneys are, but a bit lower down and more to the front of the body. Causes far less trauma to leave the original kidneys in place, than to go delving inside to remove them.

The word to remember here is ‘average’. Sometimes a transplanted kidneyks rejected soon after the operation, or fails to function after transplant. Sometimes the condition that caused their own kidneys to fail will affect the new kidney. These will bring down the ‘average’.

I had my kidney replaced as a child. The 15 years is massively lowered by people whose transplants fail, or who have another condition which has affected organ health. If you make it through the first three years okay, you have a pretty normal life expectancy.

It is major, major surgery though; and there's so much trauma for the body. That can affect life expectancy, too.

I'm pretty well now; it went really well. It's checked on every couple of years, and my scars healed well.