kidney transplant

kidney transplant Replacement of a diseased, damaged, or missing kidney with a donor kidney. Patients with end-stage kidney failure are candidates for transplantation. A successful transplant frees the patient from needing dialysis and provides the kidney’s other metabolic functions. The principal problems in kidney transplantation are immunologic—avoiding rejection of the transplanted kidney by the recipient’s immune system. The first kidney transplant was done by the US surgeon Joseph E. Murray in 1954. It was the first successful human organ transplant. See also transplant.