A study conducted by Dorry Segev and his colleagues of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has shown that people do not put their own health at risk by donating their kidney.

The study was conducted on 80,347 people who donated a kidney between April 1, 1994 and March 21, 2009. The calculated death risk was 3.1 per 10,000 cases.

The death risk of a similar group drawn from the participants of the third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES III) was calculated.

Researchers found that the death risk of live kidney donors was equal to the death risk of the matched group from NHANES III, who did not donate a kidney.

This becomes an indicator of how people do not place themselves at a higher risk by donating a kidney to others.

The authors of the research conclude, “Regardless of what physiologic changes might occur in a healthy adult after kidney donation, our findings of similar long-term survival between donors and healthy comparison patients suggest that these physiologic changes do not result in premature death”.

They also shared that even though further study is needed to understand the physiological changes after kidney donation in a better manner, the practice of live kidney donation should be considered reasonable and safe to overcome the shortage of organs.