NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Kidneys taken from living donors over the age of 55 and transplanted into older patients with kidney failure resulted in "excellent outcomes" in both individuals, according to data from the Organ Procurement Transplant Network/United Network for Organ Sharing.

"With looming changes to organ allocation in the US, living donor transplants from older living donors may prove to be an important avenue for elderly patients awaiting kidney transplantation," researchers report in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases. Led by Dr. Jagbir Gill at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the research team studied 23,754 kidney transplant recipients 60 years or older at the time of transplantation, which was from 1996 to 2005.

Nearly one third received kidneys from living donors; 1,133 donors were older than 55 years and 5,873 were younger.

Among deceased donors, 1,219 met the standard donor criteria and 4,551 were "expanded criteria donors'', defined as donors older than 60 or those between the ages of 50 to 59 with two of three adverse conditions: high blood pressure, a history of stroke, or terminal serum creatinine level greater than 1.5 milligrams per decaliter, a sign of kidney dysfunction.

After a more extensive analysis, the researchers found that graft survival was superior in all recipients of living donor transplants compared with deceased donor transplants," Gill's team reports.

Among living donor recipients, four-year patient survival was only slightly better for younger donors than for older donors (84.2 percent vs. 82.4 percent).