What is the average life expectancy after a Kidney Transplant & Dialysis? – Dr. Sankaran Sundar

Normally when you talk about kidney failure, the kidney failure we talk about the success of a transplant in a 5 year survival period because kidney failure is similar or even worse than cancer when you look at the longevity. When you look at the picture, what is called as the patient survival and the graft survival. When you do aa transplant, the transplant kidney is called as graft. So the graft survival is different form patient survival. When you talk about patient survival, the patient can lose the kidney because of rejection or something and then still go on dialysis or second transplant or third transplant if possible. On an average when you talk about 1 year of patient for graft survival is around 95% success. The 5 years is about 80%. 10 years is about 60%. So in other words, if I do 100 transplants today, at the end of 1 year 95% are still doing well. At the end of 5 years, or 8 years are still doing well. At the end of 10 years about 60% are doing well. But when you talk about dialysis. But the story here is different. The common question that people ask is dialysis better or is transplant better. There is no question at all. Transplant if successful is the best form of treatment. It is the cure for kidney failure. The quality of life after transplant is unmatched. Patients who have had kidney transplant, they have had transplant fails. They go for second, third or fourth transplant, because once they face the good quality of life on transplant, it cannot be matched with dialysis. But all patients cannot go for transplantation. There are certain contraindications for transplantation like patients who have got active infection or of they have got some malignancy or cancer, they can’t go for transplantation. So this is the reason that dialysis is the bridge for transplantation. Infact dialysis keeps the patient under disease alive till we can go for kidney transplantation. Infact if we take 100 patients for dialysis. At the end of 5 years only 30 or 40 people will be alive. So there is no question at all that a transplant is the best option for patients with kidney failure and the survival figure again will be above 5 year or 10 year or 15 year survival. On an average it is better than treating any other cancer and the success depends on many other factors also, taking the drugs correctly, following the follow up is important. My oldest transplant, I am in this field of transplantation for more than 3 or 4 decades. The oldest transplant is more than 30 years now. So it is possible for transplant kidney to go on for 30 – 40 years. It is possible.