Symptoms of After Kidney Transplant
Symptoms of After kidney transplant are a little different from the symptoms of a kidney transplant. Before knowing about symptoms after a kidney transplant, it is necessary to understand what a kidney transplant is and how a person becomes a candidate.
What is a Kidney Transplant?
A kidney transplant is an operation in which an organ called a ‘Kidney’ is taken from one body and put into another person’s body to replace the recipient’s damaged kidneys. A donated kidney may come from a living or deceased donor. Living donors provide a kidney from their bodies, while deceased donors provide organs that have been removed for transplantation after their death.
The operation can be performed using either a “living” or deceased kidney donor.
Doctors recommend transplantation when the following occurs:
1) Kidney function begins to fail (End-Stage Renal Disease, ESRD).
2) It is not possible to control blood pressure by medicines alone.
3) The person needs dialysis (artificial kidney machine).
4) The person is healthy enough to have surgery.
5) The person’s immune system is not likely to attack the new kidney.
After the transplant, the donor’s immune system will be destroyed (transplanted organs contain cells that help fight infections in all people who receive them). There are medicines called “immunosuppressants” that will help prevent the new kidney from being rejected.
Sometimes it may be necessary to give antirejection medicines throughout life, while in other cases, immunosuppression may only need to continue for a few months or years after transplantation.
The most crucial factor that decides whether you are eligible for a Kidney Transplant is your blood group (genetic makeup). It is more likely that people who belong to groups A, B, and AB are potential living donors, but group O donors present no genetic match.
Living donation carries risks of its own, including surgery-related complications, loss of the transplanted kidney, or infection of the graft with the medical treatment required lifelong.
Maximum life after kidney transplant:
The maximum time you can live with a transplanted kidney varies. The first year after transplant, your chances of living are about 94 percent. They’re 80 to 89 percent, and they’re 66 to 75 percent during years three through five.
After that, your chance of living is about 55 percent. If you have problems such as high blood pressure or diabetes that could affect your kidney function a few years down the road, ask your doctor what you can do to keep it under control.
People with transplanted kidneys have a longer life expectancy than those on dialysis because they avoid many side effects from dialyzes such as anemia and high blood pressure, among others that reduce their life span by almost five years.
what happens to old kidneys after transplant:
There is often too much of a good thing. The old kidneys were working fine, and now that you’ve donated them, your new kidney works at double the rate it had been doing. Your body needs to adjust to the overproduction of urine and the loss of two functioning kidneys.
Some people start producing urine more frequently. It may seem like you never have a full bladder anymore because your new kidney starts signaling to empty every couple of hours instead of once or twice a day. For example, you may need a minor mental adjustment – a quick stop on your way home from work instead of waiting until bedtime, but overall, the change won’t be significant.
In some cases, hyperactivity can lead to fluid retention and an increased need to urinate. This puts you at risk of severe health problems, such as heart failure and strokes. Although rare, kidney rejection is another possible complication.
The more common side effects of a transplanted kidney are incontinence and constipation. The good news is that both conditions can be treated with medications or physical therapy.
Constipation in Transplanted Kidneys:
Your new kidney has its own “brain” in the form of nerves surrounding the organ in your body about half an inch away from it. These nerves control when your bowels empty, just like those that went to the now-removed kidneys did when working normally. When these nerves sense waste products that usually should move into your bladder, they cause muscles in your bowels to squeeze harder, resulting in the urge to defecate.
If you don’t feel any urgency when these signals are transmitted, you may become constipated after receiving a kidney transplant. Constipation makes you bloated and uncomfortable.
Kidney transplant infection symptoms:
After having your kidney transplant, you may notice some symptoms in the early days, weeks, or even months after surgery. Some different infections can affect people who have had a kidney transplant. Some are mild and can be treated at home, while others need to be treated with medication given in the hospital.
Your kidneys help eliminate waste products from your food by filtering them from your blood and passing them out of your body as urine. But if one or both of your kidneys fail, these waste products build up in your body and cause fluid retention (this is known as edema). In addition to affecting how you look and feel, this excess fluid can strain many organs in the body, such as the heart, making it less efficient at pumping blood around the body.
Kidney transplants work like normal kidneys, filtering waste products from your blood and passing them out in your urine. The result is that fluid build-up levels are kept to a minimum – helping you feel better and making daily activities easier.
kidney transplant recurrence:
Usually, there is no need for people with kidney transplants to take medication unless they develop another problem later on (such as diabetes), which would mean taking additional medications. Research is being done on the potential benefits of starting antirejection drug therapy after three years following transplantation. If you remain at increased risk of rejecting your new kidney, you may be offered this treatment.
Kidney Transplant Statistics:
A kidney transplant lasts an average of 10 to 15 years with reasonable care in the first few days and months after surgery. Most transplants last more than seven years, with about 25% still functioning at ten years. For patients who have had their kidneys for less than five years, there’s a 50% chance that the transplanted organ will work for another 13 years or longer.
Kidney transplant types:
There are two basic kinds of organ transplants. The first is called an autologous transplant, where the donor’s kidney is transplanted into the person who will receive it. This means that the same person doesn’t have to give up a kidney but needs to have one removed before receiving another from a deceased donor.
If you need a new kidney because yours has failed, you’ll probably get it from someone who’s just died. Most people with end-stage renal disease ultimately get their new kidneys this way for about 4 out of 5 patients with ESRD in the U.S.; this is how they receive their transplants. It’ll take several weeks or months on dialysis first.
Kidney transplant surgeon:-
A kidney transplant surgeon is a doctor who performs organ transplants. These doctors have special training and certification in the procedure but do not need to specialize as much as many other surgeons.
Because kidney transplants are widely performed worldwide, almost any nephrologist or general surgeon can achieve them. In some instances, a kidney transplant team may include a surgical internist, an interventional radiologist, and a clinical nurse specialist.
Kidney transplant complications:
Recovery from a kidney transplant operation takes time. The availability of antirejection drugs means that most people will take their new organ without worrying about rejection developing against it.
However, there is still a risk of infection with any transplant operation. They are developing antibodies (which recognize the transplanted organ as foreign and attack it), one of the main complications of kidney transplants. Another complication is graft dysfunction, where an entire functioning kidney can fail shortly after a transplant due to infection.
Diet after kidney transplant:
As soon as you wake up after the surgery, begin drinking fluids. Your surgeon will give you instructions on your pain medication and drink plenty of water or other liquids to avoid becoming dehydrated. If you develop nausea, try small sips of clear liquids every 15 minutes until it passes. Nausea is expected in the first couple of days post-surgery.