Strangers Donating Kidneys: 'Important Contributions'

News stories abound of altruistic individuals donating their kidneys to strangers. These donations are based on the principle that a person should be willing to donate a kidney with no knowledge of the recipient's identity or medical or personal circumstances, and with agreement that the outcome of the transplantation may not be known.

Kidney transplantation remains the ideal form of renal replacement therapy and has shown consistently superior trends in mortality, cardiovascular outcomes, quality of life indices, and healthcare cost compared with all forms of dialysis.