48 | www.Ups tatePhys i c i ansSC . com | www.Hea l thL i nksUps tate. com Cathy Self was committed to her decision to donate a kidney to her good friend Linda Burns, but that didn’t mean she never stopped and asked herself: ‘Do I really want to do this?’ Like any big decision, she said, “You either commit or you don’t.” Cathy Self committed. And with that commitment, she became one of 49 living donors who have given a kidney to a friend, a spouse, a sibling or a stranger in South Carolina so far this year. Another 159 patients received a transplant from a deceased donor. Living donors are “inspiring,” to Dr. Keith Superdock, nephrologist and co-director of the PRISMA Health Transplant Center in Greenville, and “a privilege to work with” to transplant coordinator Shelby Herndon. But there are far too few of them. Currently, 1,363 South Carolinians are on the national waiting list with the average wait time for a transplant at 3.5 years. This year, according to the national organ procurement network, 10% of wait-listed South Carolina patients have died or been removed from the list because they were too ill for a transplant. “It’s not that people aren’t willing to donate,” Herndon explained. “It’s because they aren’t healthy enough. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack.” The donor evaluation process begins with blood and tissue screening. Surprisingly, it’s not as difficult for unrelated donors to match today as it once was, according to Dr. Superdock. “The degree of match between recipient and donor has become less important because the drugs we use to prevent rejection have become more effective,” he explained. Rigorous testing is, however, designed to assess the donor's health condition, which must be “perfect,” Dr. Superdock said, adding that the confidence that the donor’s “residual kidney function will be more than enough to sustain them through a full life” is essential. Otherwise, the transplant would be unethical. This can be a problem in South Carolina and the Southeast, where diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity are among the highest in the nation – and they also are three kidney killers. “That means we have more people who need a kidney transplant and fewer people who can donate a kidney,” according to Dr. Superdock. Kidney failure is a more prevalent among African-Americans. “A lot of diseases that travel within the Black population affect the whole family. Oftentimes, if hypertension results in kidney disease in one member of the family, it affects multiple members of that family due to similar genetic makeup,” Dr. Superdock noted. Because of this deliberative process, those who do end up donating face minimal risk, relatively quick recovery and few, if any, limitations on a normal life. But for the recipient, the difference between a living kidney and one from a deceased person one can mean years of life. Dr. Superdock said a kidney received from a deceased donor has an average survival rate of THE ARDUOUS AND INSPIRATIONAL PATH OF ORGAN DONORS Donor Cathy Self, left, and recipient Linda Burns a few weeks prior to the surgery. By Laura Haight
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