To Reach Our Kidney Transplantation Center From Other Countries

Patients from abroad most commonly apply to our Kidney Transplant Center from Middle East, Eastern Europe and other Turkic Republics due to quality hospital facilities and advanced medical services in Turkey. Since only Turkish patients are allowed to apply for National Cadaveric Kidney Transplantation List, our patients from abroad can have living-donor kidney transplantation.

Today, the most successful treatment for kidney failure is kidney transplantation. Kidney transplantation provides long and healthy life. In all developed countries as well as our country’s the Ministry of Health recommends kidney transplantation as first stage treatment and recommends patients who start dialysis should also be evaluated for undergoing kidney transplantation at an organ transplantation center.

Issues need-to-know

• Who cannot be transplanted?
  Patients, who are detected severe heart diseases that cannot carry the surgery risk; patients with cancer disease, patients with active infectious diseases.
• Foreign patients’ relatives, who will be kidney donor, must be in proximity of 4^th degree of kinship as specified in the organ transplantation regulations in our country. In-law kinship is also accepted according to the regulations in our country, 4^th degree of kinship of the spouse are also is considered to be close relatives.
• In the case that patients from abroad has blood group incompliance, assessment of them in a cross transplantation list with the other couples in our center can provide an additional transplantation chance to foreign patients.
• Patients admitted to our center are hospitalized and evaluated quickly for kidney transplant eligibility. Specialist physician assessments, detailed tissue and cross examinations are completed. Preparation process for kidney transplantation usually lasts 2-3 days. At our center, operation priority is given to the guest patients from abroad.
• If recipient and donor are found eligible for kidney transplantation, kidney transplantation surgery is performed in the same week.
• Patients from abroad are followed-up in our kidney transplantation follow-up program after transplantation.

The people, who want to donate kidney to their relatives, are operated in our center via “Retroperitoneoscopy technique”, which is more advanced and secure way “laparoscopic technique” widely performed in the world. In laparoscopic technique; the risk of developing damage to intra-abdominal organs, bowel adhesions, and even bowel obstruction during surgery is present due to kidney removal by entering into the abdomen.

We minimize risks, maximize safety for donors!

At our center, kidney removal is provided via a small surgical incisions under the camera without any contact to intra-abdominal organs using retroperitoneoscopic technique. By use of this advanced surgical technique, we can avoid negative aspect of laparoscopic technique. Thus donors will be able to leave the hospital within 2-3 days.

Kidney transplantation under challenging conditions

Cross-transplantation (kidney brotherhood) method is an appropriate method to overcome the problem of blood group incompatibility between donor and recipient. In this case, donor change can be made between the recipient with blood group A and donor couple with blood group B, and recipient with blood group B and donor couple with blood group A; and both operations can be performed by the admission of the patients and the donors at the same time.

After your application

• When you first came to our center, you will meet with the coordinators, organ transplantation surgeon and nephrology specialist in our transplantation team.
• After performing your history and physical examination in a detailed way, your current examinations will be evaluated and necessary further examinations will be asked.
• Determination of blood group, tissue type determination and antibody level determination examinations will be performed at the same time.
• When necessary, mutual information transfer is performed with you physician following kidney disease.
• We strongly recommend you to evaluate your opportunities especially on living-donor kidney transplantation before applying to us and ask if one of your relatives is willing to be the donor.
• When you apply to us, your kidney disease and other health problems will be evaluated in detail.
• The evaluation of cardiac performance in patients that will undergo kidney transplantation is very important. The patients that will undergo living-donor kidney transplantation are evaluated with echocardiography or stress test before the operation.
• If your donor is one of your relatives, your donor will be evaluated by the nephrology specialist and transplantation surgeon in detail.
• If the health condition of donor is good, blood tests are performed.
• If tests are within normal limits, then abdominal 3-D computerized tomography is performed to control structure and vascularization of kidneys.
• After trough evaluation of health conditions of both donor, and recipient is performed, and results are normal, then living-donor kidney transplantation is performed.

Which tests are performed on kidney recipients?

• Routine blood and imaging tests that will be performed to the people to be performed kidney transplantation before transplantation are completed within 2-3 days.
• Cardiological tests such as echocardiography performed recently are evaluated.
• In cases such as previously presence of tuberculosis or a similar infectious disease, kidneys causing infections frequently, polycystic kidneys, presence of hepatitis B or C further examinations may be requested.
• Existing diseases should be carefully evaluated prior to transplantation for ensuring everything to go smoothly after kidney transplantation.

Which tests are performed on kidney donors?

The preparations made by the person, who wants to donate kidney, are carried out with

• blood and urine tests,
• tissue and cross examinations,
• expert assessments,
• kidney computed tomography.

Blood and urine tests of the kidney donor are performed first. All blood and urine tests result within a day. To collect all of your urine within 24 hours is asked for urinalysis. Therefore, the donor person needs to begin to accumulate urine the day before examination. Take a clean, empty, plastic water container for 24-hour urine collection. It is very valuable to collect every drop of urine you make in terms of the result of the test to be performed.

You can start urine collection from the time you normally wake up in the morning. Pour the first urine after waking-up to the toilet. Collect your urine you make all day and overnight into the given container and also make your first urine next morning into the container that you accumulate urine. The urine collection process will end when you add the first urine of the next day to the collection container. All of the collected urine should be submitted to the laboratory.