title: The psychosocial impact of renal transplantation on living related donors and recipients: preliminary report.
abstract: We investigated the psychosocial and demographic features of living related kidney donors and recipients during follow-up visits between August 2002 and March 2003 using two new questionnaires, one for donors and one for recipients. The surveys were distributed to 22 donors and 55 recipients, 18 (81.8%) donors and 49 (89.1%) recipients completed their questionnaires. Concerning level of satisfaction with quality of life after transplantation, 93.9% of the recipients and 72.2% of the donors were "highly satisfied". Almost all donors (94.4%) said that they would make the same decision again and would also strongly encourage others to donate. Issues related to donor dissatisfaction involved beliefs that preoperative information was inadequate and perceived negative effects of transplantation on personal health at the time the survey was conducted. Only 6.1% of the recipients said they were dissatisfied with their quality of life after the operation. The main issues were psychiatric morbidity and beliefs that preoperative information was inadequate. Overall, the vast majority of donors and recipients reported that they had a positive transplantation experience. Only a small proportion of the subjects developed psychosocial morbidity or were dissatisfied with their quality of life. These results are preliminary, but it appears that better psychological preparation for the transplantation process and close psychiatric follow-up would reduce negative outcomes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Başkent University Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ozçürümez
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tanriverdi
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Colak
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Emiroğlu
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zileli
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haberal
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000523:psychology*; D019520:Living Donors / Q000523:psychology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology; D012917:Social Adjustment; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires