Enhancing Transplant Success with Living Organ Donation and Advanced Diagnostics

In the United States, the gap between patients who need an organ transplant and available organs continues to grow, with nearly 108,000 Americans on the national transplant waiting list. Most people think of organ donation as something that happens after death, but there are also opportunities to become a living donor.

Only a small percentage of organs available from deceased donors are viable for transplantation. Therefore, increasing living organ donation is critical for bridging the supply and demand gap, particularly for kidney and liver transplants. If even 1 percent of adults in the US became kidney or partial liver living donors, the waitlists for kidney and liver transplants would significantly decrease.

Unlocking better outcomes through living donation 

Living donors offer recipients a faster, more reliable path to a successful transplant. Kidneys are the most transplanted organ in the US, and survival rates from living kidney donations are approximately five to eight years longer than those received from deceased donors. 

Patients who receive a living donation typically have better outcomes due to better tissue matching and donor screening opportunities, the ability to maintain controlled conditions with planned procedures, and shorter cold ischemia time, which is the amount of time an organ is without blood flow. The organ is generally in a healthier state at the time of transplant when compared to organs from deceased donors. 

What’s more, living donation can make the wait for a transplant shorter, with the typical workup for a living donor taking a few months. As patients typically wait three to five years on average for a kidney when placed on the transplant list, many patients get sicker or die while waiting. This makes faster access to a donor organ a truly lifesaving advantage.   

By receiving healthier organs more quickly, living donations may also ease some of the emotional burden that patients and families experience while waiting for a viable organ match.

The power of living donation paired with diagnostics

The role of in vitro diagnostics is also an important component in enabling successful outcomes for transplant patients. Laboratory diagnostic tests are vital for identifying donor recipient matches, and consequently, the long-term success of transplantations. Living donations from relatives paired with insights from diagnostic tests are a powerful combination in helping improve the success of transplants since receiving a living donation through a relative offers better genetic matches and lowers the risk of graft rejection.  

Whether from a related or unrelated donor, organs from living donations also have a greater longevity than those from deceased donors. Living donor kidneys, for example, function 5–10 years longer on average than deceased donor kidneys. 

These healthy organs paired with diagnostic tools that allow for earlier and more frequent post-transplant monitoring may also optimize long-term outcomes for patients by allowing clinicians to intervene earlier if needed and provide more personalized treatment regimens, as well as to potentially reduce the need for invasive and costly biopsies. New, minimally invasive laboratory tests such as the urine-based CXCL10 biomarker test go one step further by being even less invasive and more convenient for patients versus traditional post-transplant monitoring tests.

Solutions to help reduce the organ shortage

With living organ donations on the rise, we are inching closer to a future where living donations are more common, which means that more patients will receive the care they need at faster rates than before. And emerging innovations in transplant diagnostic testing offer the promise of better tools to inform clinical decision making. 

While progress is being made, more awareness is needed around the lifesaving benefits of both living organ donation and advanced diagnostics. Clinicians and healthcare professionals, advocacy groups, health insurers, and employers must work together to increase public awareness and education about living donation and the benefits of advanced diagnostic solutions.  

Living donation offers patients the priceless gift of time and hope for better quality of life, and when paired with meaningful insights from laboratory diagnostics, can transform lives of patients and their caregivers, while inspiring a healthier future for our communities.