Reserved for people with end-stage renal failure, kidney transplantation is that delicate surgical procedure by which one of the two original kidneys is replaced by another healthy one, coming from a compatible donor.
In general, the "new" kidney is taken from a recently deceased donor ; however, if the conditions are met, it can also be taken by a living person . Living donors are usually direct family members, but they could also be foreign volunteers .
The first kidney transplant in history was held on June 17, 1950, at the Little Company of Mary Hospital in Evergreen Park (Illinois). The operated patient was a 44-year-old woman, named Ruth Tucker, suffering from polycystic kidney disease .
The new kidney was rejected after 10 months; after all, the anti-rejection drugs available today did not yet exist.
However, those 10 months were fundamental for the other kidney, as it recovered some of its functionality. In fact, R. Tucker lived for another 5 years.
The first two live donor kidney transplants were held in 1952, at the Necker Hospital in Paris, and in 1954, in Boston (United States). The intervention of 1952 was carried out by Dr. Jean Hamburger and was met with rejection after just 3 weeks; the 1954 operation, on the other hand, was carried out by Joseph Murray and other collaborators and involved two homozygous twins. For the success of this second transplant - the recipient lived another 8 years - J. Murray received the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990 .
The first kidney transplants in the United Kingdom and Italy date back, respectively, to 1960 and 1966 . The intervention held in the United Kingdom was the work of a certain Michael Woodruff, while the one held in our country was the work of a certain Aldo De Maria .
Initially, due to the lack of adequate anti-rejection medicines, dead donor kidney transplants had little success.They began to give good results only starting from 1963-1964 - or since the first corticosteroid drugs were available - and with the advent of cyclosporine .
