CHARLESTON, W.Va. — One study is saying patients are waiting less time at Charleston’s Area Medical Center to receive a kidney transplant.
According to the Scientific Registry for Transplant Recipients (SRTR), CAMC has ranked second in the country for the reduced wait time for these transplants.
A CAMC transplant surgeon Santosh Nagaraju said patients coming to the hospital to receive a kidney transplant often wait six to eight months opposed to five to seven years at other places.
CAMC Kidney Transplant Center Administrator Alice Jones said by ensuring kidney transplant patients don’t have to wait as long, they are bolstering their chances of regaining their health more efficiently.
“The longer the patients spend on the waitlist on dialysis there’s an increased risk of them having a bad outcome, so really the most advantageous thing for them is to get transplanted quickly,” Jones said.
After the transplant center opened in 1987, CAMC has performed nearly 1,700 kidney transplants, including 76 of them so far this year.
Jones said people who may need a kidney transplant are those experiencing stage 5 chronic kidney disease or end-stage renal disease, also known as kidney failure. The only options for these medical issues Jones said are either dialysis or getting a transplant.
Jones said dialysis can be a lifesaver for patients in this position as there are only a limited number of organ donors, making the wait time longer. It serves as a bridge to transplants that helps sustain them, but she said by the time they start to feel better after a dialysis session it’s time to go again.
“A lot of times they’re surviving but they’re not able to live, they’re not truly living,” she said.
Jones said often times patients experience fluid issues and frequent hospital visits due to infections, among other complications dialysis can present which getting a transplant resolves.
“With transplants they don’t have that up and down with the toxins in their body, their kidneys are functioning normally and they don’t have that issue of going up high and coming off all at once and then building again,” Jones said.
CAMC offers two kinds of transplants, those from a deceased donor, where the average wait time varies based on the patient’s blood type, and living donor transplants, which can be given by people related or unrelated to the patient.
Following the positive rating the center received, Jones said their aim is now continued expansion and further community outreach.
“We’re continuing to grow, we have done a lot of outreach in the communities, we go out to the dialysis units, they call them lobby days, but we set up in the dialysis units and try to provide education to the patients,” said Jones.
The transplant center helped to co-sponsor this past Live on the Levee where they handed out information about the center, spread awareness on the importance of becoming an organ donor and tried to help break any stigma that surrounds it.
Jones said through the study and outreach initiatives they do, the word about the center is spreading, and they are experiencing more out-of-state referrals than ever before.
She said the study conducted by SRTR, which is the national site that designs and carries out data analysis about the current transplantation status in the U.S., is available for people to view and familiarize themselves with the transplant center.