Kidney Transplant

Has your doctor told you that you may need a kidney transplant in the future?

If you are suffering from an advanced kidney disease our kidney transplant team is here to help you determine your best treatment options. If you're reading this while considering calling us, or you're on the waiting list for a new organ, we strongly encourage you to learn about the benefits of finding a living donor. If you're a patient here, please ask your friends, family and loved ones to be tested.

Nebraska Medicine's Kidney Transplant Program:

• Nebraska's only transplant center
• offers shorter wait times than the national average
• performed more than 1,250 living donor kidney transplants
• performed more than 4,600 adult and pediatric kidney transplants
• consistently ranks in the top 50 kidney transplant programs in the country
• offers innovative immunosuppressant protocols
• staffed by an experienced and knowledgeable multidisciplinary team
• runs an active and innovative living-donor program
• performs laparoscopic (minimally-invasive) living donor and polycystic kidney disease surgery

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Managing Your Kidney Disease

A number of disease processes can lead to kidney failure and transplantation. They affect people in different ways and do not necessarily mean you will need a kidney transplant.

The most common kidney diseases include:

• Diabetes mellitus—Type I and II
• Hypertension (high blood pressure)
• Inherited kidney diseases such as polycistic kidney disease
• Glomerulonephritis
• Side effects of a medication

When the kidneys fail to remove waste products from the blood, a condition known as uremia develops. Most people do not develop symptoms of kidney failure (or uremia) until 90 percent of the kidney function is lost. Once this occurs, the work of the kidneys must be done by dialysis, which is an artificial way of filtering the blood.

Considering a Kidney Transplant

If your doctor feels that you are experiencing kidney failure, you will most likely be referred to a nephrologist, a doctor who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease. Following the assessment and confirmation of kidney failure, you can then be referred to our transplant center for a transplant evaluation. During your transplant evaluation the team will do a thorough assessment looking at signs and symptoms of your kidney disease, developing a treatment plan and answering any specific questions related to kidney disease and/or transplantation.

As a treatment, kidney transplantation offers patients a better quality of life than ongoing dialysis. To learn more about kidney transplant options and the post-transplant care we offer at Nebraska Medicine call 402.559.5000.

See Our Statistics

The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) is an ever-expanding national database of transplantation statistics. Founded in 1987, the registry exists to support the ongoing evaluation of the scientific and clinical status of solid organ transplantation, including kidney, heart, liver, lung, intestine and pancreas.

Data in the registry is collected by the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) from hospitals and organ procurement organizations (OPOs) across the country. The SRTR contains current and past information about the full continuum of transplant activity—from organ donation and waiting list candidates to transplant recipients and survival statistics. This information is used to help develop evidence-based policy, to support analysis of transplant programs and OPOs, and to encourage research on issues of importance to the transplant community.