With the agreement just ratified by the State-Regions Conference, a new strategy to increase living kidney transplants officially starts, a procedure that can give more hope to over 6 thousand renal patients.
The initiative, explains a press release from the National Transplant Center, provides for a series of measures that the Regions will have to adopt, such as the establishment of pre-dialysis clinics with specifically trained doctors, nurses and psychologists.
The objective of the project carried out by the CNT, explains the note, is to make the therapeutic option of living kidney transplantation feasible throughout the national territory.
"Despite significant growth in recent years, in Italy the use of living kidney transplantation is still too modest, about 15% of the total, while in Northern European countries and the United States it is between 30 and 50%", explains the director of the Cnt Massimo Cardillo. "At the same time, in our country every year around 10,000 new patients begin dialysis treatment, of which at least one out of three is a candidate for kidney transplantation: at least 2,500-3,000 kidney transplants should be performed per year, while those we currently carry out thanks to the deceased donors are just over 2,000. This does not allow the satisfaction of emerging demand nor, much less, the disposal of the waiting list ".
The new strategy, which the Regions and the Autonomous Provinces will have to incorporate and implement in the short term, provides that the Regions identify enhancement mechanisms for the nephrological centers and dialysis that will enroll significant shares of patients on waiting lists, while the experience specific in the evaluation of candidates for living transplantation and in the follow up of transplant recipients will be required as a requisite for future head physicians of nephrology of hospitals with kidney transplant centers. Furthermore, the diagnostic investigations necessary for the assessment of suitability for donation and transplantation, which are too slow today, must enjoy preferential routes. (HANDLE).