<i>ABC of kidney transplantation</i>

Kidney transplantation means replacement of a diseased or missing kidney or failed kidney with a healthy kidney from another person, called 'donor'. It is an operation also known as renal transplant (renal is another word for kidney). People who receive a transplant must take medication and be monitored by a physician who specialises in kidney disease, known as Nephrologist.
During a transplant, the transplant team places the healthy kidney in patient's lower abdomen and connects the artery and vein of the new kidney to patient's artery and vein. Often, the new kidney will start making urine as soon as blood starts flowing through it. But sometimes it may take a few weeks to start functioning.
The main purpose of the kidneys is to purify the blood waste products such as uric acid and other toxic substances. At any point in time, one-fifth of the total blood in the body is filtered by the kidneys.
A person suffers from renal disease when, owing to an impairment in their function, the kidneys can not clean the blood competently. Common diseases like diabetes, hypertension and chronic glomerulo-nephritis can lead to permanent loss of renal functions. The kidneys in end-stage renal disease function so poorly that they can no longer keep you alive.
End-stage renal disease cannot be treated with medicine or drugs. Only two treatments allow you to continue living when your kidneys stop functioning. They are dialyses and kidney transplantation. Dialysis is the term for several different methods of artificially filtering the blood.
Today, kidney transplantation has traveled a long way to achieve the present status with very good results due to high-tech surgical management and immunosuppressive drugs.
According to strict regulations, most countries require living donors to be family members, or that organs must be removed from cadavers. Some of our neighboring countries have become an attractive center for the transplantation of kidneys. Some hospitals in Dhaka, mostly private, have the transplant programme in Bangladesh.
In our country, healthy kidney comes from a living family member. Transplanted kidneys may come from donors who have died. The wait for a new kidney can be long. People who have transplants must take drugs to keep their body from rejecting the new kidney for the rest of their lives.