All of rpdrewes's Comments + Replies
The claim that kidney donation does not affect donor survival is based mainly on [Ibrahim NEJM 2009], which has a very serious flaw. In that study donors are matched to controls from the general population, which is significantly less healthy than screened donors. In contrast [Mjoen 2013] found very significant reduction in survival rates for donors. A footnote on this EA page claims that [Mjoen 2013] also makes an error in matching to controls with the control group being younger, but the [Mjoen 2013] authors address this concern here:
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The claim about donor survival is more based off of Segev, 2010, which does use controls matched on health (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=185508&resultclick=1). (There was an editing error in the footnote above, sorry about that).
Good point about the age-matching, which I'll update our website to reflect. Agree that the Mjoen piece definitely has value (which is why we included it), but there are other reasonable criticisms (like the controls all being drawn from the same region and from an earlier time period) raised as well.
Thanks for your reply.
The JAMA article you cite is not a good one for this discussion, I think, because the median followup was just 6.3 years. The mortality curves for donors and properly matched controls don't start moving apart until about 10 years. At 15 years, the difference is quite pronounced. At 20 years post donation, donors are looking at 50% increased mortality compared to properly matched controls.
Kidney donation is still a huge benefit for recipients, and may be a net benefit, but it is a much bigger risk (I believe) for donors than has been portrayed. Yet major donor web sites (Stanford, Maryland Medical Center) haven't caught up to the research.