NIV Congres

Background Living kidney donation is the preferred treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease, because of better long-term recipient and graft survival, shorter waiting list times, and better quality of life for the recipient than after postmortal donation. Although most donors recover well after surgery, about 10-25% of donors experience emotional or physical problems on the longer term. The current review provides an overview of psychosocial risk factors identified in the literature for longer term physical and emotional problems in living kidney donors.

MethodsA literature search was conducted using PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Psych INFO. Due to the limited number of pre-post donation prospective studies, cross-sectional and prospective quantitative studies were included.

Results Psychosocial factors including psychological distress and unrealistic expectations before the donation, as well as fatigue and perceived negative donor-recipient relationship changes after the donation have been reported as predictors for longer term physical and emotional problems in living kidney donors.

Discussion The limited number of studies on this topic provides a preliminary indication of specific psychosocial risk factors for developing longer term emotional and physical problems in living kidney donors. More prospective research is needed to get insight in pre-donation predictors of these problems, in order to enable better screening of potential donors and to focus pre- or post-donation interventions.