Patient Spouses Good Source For Kidneys

Doctors have identified a surprisingly successful source of donated organs for people who need kidney transplants - the patients’ own spouses.

The researchers found that kidneys taken from patients’ husbands and wives survive almost as well as those removed from identical twins, which have long been the gold standard in organ transplants.

For the study, Dr. Paul I. Terasaki and colleagues from the University of California at Los Angeles compiled data from 50,601 transplants performed at 97 U.S. hospitals.

They found that 85 percent of kidneys transplanted between spouses survived at least three years, compared with 90 percent survival between identical twins.