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By Mayo Clinic staff
During a kidney transplant
Kidney transplants are performed with general anesthesia, so you're unconscious during the procedure. The anesthesiologist or anesthetist gives you an anesthetic medication as a gas — to breathe through a mask — or injects a liquid medication into a vein.
The surgical team monitors your heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen throughout the procedure with a blood pressure cuff on your arm and heart-monitor wires attached to your chest. After you're unconscious:
- The surgeon makes an incision and places the new kidney in your lower abdomen. Unless your own kidneys are causing complications such as high blood pressure or infection, they are left in place.
- The blood vessels of the new kidney are attached to blood vessels in the lower part of your abdomen, just above one of your legs.
- The new kidney's ureter — the tube that links the kidney to the bladder — is connected to your bladder.
Kidney transplant surgery usually lasts about three to five hours.
After a kidney transplant
After your kidney transplant, you can expect to:
- Spend about 3 to 5 days in the hospital. Doctors and nurses monitor your condition in the hospital's transplant recovery area to watch for signs of complications. Your new kidney will make urine like your own kidneys did when they were healthy. Often this starts immediately. In other cases it takes up to a few weeks. Expect soreness or pain around the incision site while you're healing.
- Have frequent checkups as you continue recovering. After you leave the hospital, close monitoring is necessary for three to four weeks. Your transplant team will develop a checkup schedule that's right for you. During this time, if you live in another town, you may need to make arrangements to stay close to the transplant center.
- Take medications the rest of your life. You'll take a number of medications after your kidney transplant. Drugs called immunosuppressants help keep your immune system from attacking your new kidney. Additional drugs help reduce the risk of other complications, such as infection, after your transplant.
- Kidney transplant. National Kidney Foundation. http://www.kidney.org/atoz/atozprint.cfm?id=86. Accessed July 12, 2009.
- Punch JD. Organ transplantation. In: Doherty GM, et al. Current Surgical Diagnosis & Treatment. 12th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2006. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=2066708. Accessed July 12, 2009.
- Kidney failure: Choosing a treatment that's right for you. National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse. http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/choosingtreatment/. Accessed July 13, 2009.
- Post TW, et al. Patient survival after renal transplantation. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed June 25, 2009.
- Humar A, et al. Transplantation. In: Brunicardi FC, et al. Schwartz's Principles of Surgery. 8th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2005. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=799511. Accessed July 13, 2009.
- Getting a new kidney. American Society of Transplantation. http://www.a-s-t.org/files/pdf/patient_education/english/AST-EdBroNEWKIDNEY-ENG.pdf. Accessed July 13, 2009.
- Coping with the physical side effects of anti-rejection medications. American Society of Transplantation. http://www.healthytransplant.com/index.php?q=quality_of_life/coping_with_the_physical_side_effect_of_anti-rejection_medications. Accessed July 13, 2009.
- Morgan GE, et al. Anesthesia for genitourinary surgery. In Morgan GE. Clinical Anesthesiology. 4th ed. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2006. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=893115. Accessed July 12, 2009.
- Shapiro R. Overview of the surgery of deceased donor renal transplantation. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed July 13, 2009.
- OPTN/SRTR annual report: Adjusted graft survival by year of transplant at 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years, living donor kidney transplants. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. http://www.ustransplant.org/annual_reports/current/509c_ki.htm. Accessed July 14, 2009.
- OPTN/SRTR annual report: Adjusted graft survival by year of transplant at 3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years, deceased donor non-ECD kidney transplants. Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. http://www.ustransplant.org/annual_reports/current/509a_ki.htm. Accessed July 14, 2009.
