The Rh factor (+ or -) in the blood doesn't matter when it comes to organ transplantation. Blood group O patients, however, have certain disadvantages when it comes to assigning organs from deceased donors to the Eurotransplant Renal Assignment System and have fewer living donors compatible with the ABO. To investigate the consequences of this dilemma, researchers analyzed the outcome of blood group O patients in their transplant program. It's important to note that being a compatible blood type is just one part of knowing if a person will be compatible for a transplant.
The Rh factor is not important for kidney compatibility. If a person gets a kidney from someone with an incompatible blood type, the normal immune system will reject it immediately because natural antibodies fight different types of blood. Current allocation systems and living donor kidney exchange programs should be reevaluated to address this problem. Combined with a lower number of transplants from living donors, this translates into a lower rate of kidney transplants in O.
Over the past decade, a shortage of deceased donors and longer waiting times have led to an increase in the number of living donor kidney transplants worldwide. The combined analysis of the survival of kidney grafts from living and deceased donors revealed the same trend (data not shown). It's obvious that an increase in post-mortem organ donation rates would positively affect patients of all blood groups who were on the waiting list and not just for kidney transplants.Due to biological barriers, a patient in blood group O is at a disadvantage when it comes to receiving a graft from a living donor and, potentially, at a disadvantage in receiving an organ from a deceased donor in a timely manner due to Eurotransplant's current kidney allocation policy. Kidney transplantation through living donation should be encouraged, including the use of cross-programs that are incompatible with ABO and the acceptance of altruistic kidney donation, especially in blood group O recipients.If you have a living donor, but that person's kidney is not compatible with you, you can still receive a kidney transplant from a living donor.
If your blood group doesn't match the donor's blood group, you won't be able to get a kidney from that person directly, but you can still get a kidney transplant from another donor through paired kidney donation.Given the current shortage of deceased donors, a kidney transplant from a living donor is an appropriate option to achieve higher transplant rates and shorter wait times for all patients.
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