accidents), as well as the promotion of more healthy lifestyles with emphasis on exercise and improved dietary habits (and the subsequent reduction in the incidence of stroke). Data from the UK Transplant

Living donor kidney transplantation is an amazing act of altruism that forever affects the life of the donor and that of the recipient and his or her family. Some of the greatest triumphs of modern surgery are associated with living donor transplantation. Those achievements result from a high degree of inspired and extremely diligent work by multidisciplinary medical teams and from the courage and determination of the patients and their families. Living donor kidney transplantation is the treatment of choice for patients with end-stage renal failure for the following reasons: a) the transplant is performed when the donor and the recipient are in optimum medical condition and at a time that is convenient for them and for their families, b) recipients of living donor kidney grafts enjoy greater long-term graft survival and a better quality of life than do recipients of cadaveric kidney grafts [1, 2, 3], c) living donor kidney transplantation reduces the cost of health care for every patient with end-stage renal failure, because the cost of dialysis (which is £60,000/patient/y in the United Kingdom (UK) at the time of this writing) is supplanted by the cost of living donor kidney transplantation (which is £25,000/patient, including the cost of immunosuppressive medications, which is £3000/patient/y), and d) it reduces the number of patients on the wait list for a cadaveric kidney and therefore increases the likelihood that patients with no potential living donor can undergo transplantation. This is particularly important because the gap between the number of cadaveric donors and the number of patients on the waiting list is increasing in the UK. That growing discrepancy can be explained partly by the development of strong national campaigns for safe driving, a significant improvement in the safety features of vehicles (eg, airbags), and more stringent monitoring of motorists by the police (which has caused a significant reduction in traffic accidents), as well as the promotion of more healthy lifestyles with emphasis on exercise and improved dietary habits (and the subsequent reduction in the incidence of stroke). Data from the UK Transplant (the national regulatory authority for organ donation and transplantation) showed that between 1994 and 2003, there was an increase of 60.1% in the number of patients on the waiting list for a cadaveric kidney transplant and a 16.7% decrease in the number of cadaveric donors [4]. In fact, an increasing number of patients worldwide are maintained on dialysis, but in most countries, the number of donors fails to meet the demand or is even decreasing, as has been the case in the United Kingdom. Retrieving a kidney from a healthy individual and Ethical Issues in Living Donor Kidney Transplantation