Washington, March 15 (IANS) An analysis of outcomes for live kidney donors in the US over a 15-year period has found they have similar long-term survival rates compared to healthy individuals who were not kidney donors.

Many patients with end-stage renal (kidney) disease are turning to live donor kidney transplantation to improve survival and quality of life because of the shortage of organs available from the deceased donor pool.

More than 6,000 healthy US individuals every year undergo nephrectomy for the purpose of live donation.

Dorry L. Segev of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues examined the outcomes of live kidney donors (80,347) in the US between April 1, 1994, and March 31, 2009, who were drawn from a mandated national registry. Median (midpoint) follow-up was 6.3 years. A matched group was drawn from 9,364 participants of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III).

During the study period, there were 25 deaths within 90 days of live kidney donation, with the risk of death being 3.1 per 10,000 donors, compared to a rate of death for the NHANES III matched group of 0.4 per 10,000 people.

By one year following nephrectomy, risk of death in the matched group was similar to the live donor group, likely representing deaths attributable to comorbidity (co-existing illnesses) rather than death because of the surgery.

The researchers found that long-term mortality was similar or lower for live kidney donors than for the matched NHANES III group throughout the 12-year period of follow-up.

'Surgical mortality did not change during the 15-year period, despite differences in surgical practice and donor selection. Men had a significantly higher surgical mortality than women did, as did black individuals vs. white and Hispanic individuals,' the authors write.

Donors with hypertension also had a significantly higher surgical mortality than did donors without hypertension.

'Regardless of what physiologic changes might occur in a healthy adult after kidney donation, our findings of similar long-term survival between donors and healthy comparison patients suggest that these physiologic changes do not result in premature death. Although additional studies are clearly needed to better understand the physiologic changes after kidney donation, the current practice of live kidney donation should continue to be considered a reasonable and safe modality for addressing the profound shortage in deceased donor organs,' the authors conclude.

The study was published in the March issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.