November 18, 2015 – Who’s At Risk?

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Anchor lead: A new risk calculator could help more people decide to donate a kidney, Elizabeth Tracey reports

More than 122,000 people are currently waiting for a kidney transplant, a national registry reports, and because of success in paired transplants, many friends and relatives of those folks are considering donating a kidney.  Now a new risk calculator developed by Morgan Grams and colleagues at Johns Hopkins uses a multitude of factors to determine risk.

Grams: Not surprisingly people who have risk factors like higher systolic blood pressure, the use of antihypertensive medications, people who have noninsulin dependent diabetes, people who have lower kidney function, those people all have a slightly higher risk of end stage renal disease during their lifetimes and during the next 15 years.   ;20

Grams says the tool may also show many older people are good candidates for donation.

Grams: For older people we found that a 15 year risk is actually a pretty good estimate or time frame in terms of looking at absolute risk of developing end stage renal disease.   :10

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.