Individual differences in personality profiles among potential living kidney transplant donors

Recommendations for living donor kidney transplantation

This Guide for Living Donor Kidney Transplantation (LDKT) has been prepared with the sponsorship of the Spanish Society of Nephrology (SEN), the Spanish Transplant Society (SET), and the Spanish National Transplant Organization (ONT). It updates evidence to offer the best chronic renal failure treatment when a potential living donor is available. The core aim of this Guide is to supply clinicians who evaluate living donors and transplant recipients with the best decision-making tools, to optimise their outcomes. Moreover, the role of living donors in the current KT context should recover the level of importance it had until recently. To this end the new forms of incompatible HLA and/or ABO donation, as well as the paired donation which is possible in several hospitals with experience in LDKT, offer additional ways to treat renal patients with an incompatible donor. Good results in terms of patient and graft survival have expanded the range of circumstances under which living renal donors are accepted. Older donors are now accepted, as are others with factors that affect the decision, such as a borderline clinical history or alterations, which when evaluated may lead to an additional number of transplantations. This Guide does not forget that LDKT may lead to risk for the donor. Pre-donation evaluation has to centre on the problems which may arise over the short or long-term, and these have to be described to the potential donor so that they are able take them into account. Experience over recent years has led to progress in risk analysis, to protect donors' health. This aspect always has to be taken into account by LDKT programmes when evaluating potential donors. Finally, this Guide has been designed to aid decision-making, with recommendations and suggestions when uncertainties arise in pre-donation studies. Its overarching aim is to ensure that informed consent is based on high quality studies and information supplied to donors and recipients, offering the strongest possible guarantees.

Personality and psychopathology in potential live kidney donors: A cluster analysis of personality features

Background

The previous psychosocial evaluation of the potential living kidney donors (PLKD) requires a detailed understanding of the psychosocial benefits and the possible damages of the act of donation.

Objective

The aim was to create clusters by using the clinical patterns of personality and to evaluate their influence on psychopathological variables.

Methods

Observational, analytical and cross-sectional study that included the PLKD from February 2009 to March 2017. The patients were referred to the Hospital Psychology Unit by the Transplant Coordination Unit. The total sample was composed of 100 participants. The socio-demographic characteristics, the relationship with the recipient and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory were included.

Results

The final sample was composed by 100 PLKD. The mean age of the participants was 45.70, and most were women (70%). The analysis showed a final result of 3 personality clusters that best represented the data, in agreement with the DSM-5 classification. The PLKD from cluster 3 obtained greater scores in all the clinical syndromes.

Conclusions

The personality evaluation of the PLKD could help with the planning of monitoring protocols of the participants who were classified to cluster 3, in order to improve their post-transplant psychosocial adjustment. This result makes us consider the usefulness of the psychosocial evaluation to preserve the psychological health of the PLKD.