THE chance of someone surviving a sudden cardiac arrest after being shocked by a defibrillator is much higher today than it was 20 years ago.

Yet, the risks involved in donating your kidney in Singapore are the same as they were 20 years ago.

In an e-mail interview, the director of the Adult Renal Transplantation Programme at the National University Hospital, Professor A Vathsala, said kidney donors usually face risks on three fronts - risks from surgery and post-surgery, risks from having only one kidney and financial risks.

On operative and post-operative risks, Prof Vathsala said: "As with any operation that requires bedrest after surgery, there is a risk of a blood clot in the legs that can go up to the lungs a few days after the surgery."

However, Prof Vathsala, who is also the president of the Society of Transplantation (Singapore), pointed out that the bleeding and blood clot problems rarely cause death in the donor.

On surviving with one kidney, she added that donors should be careful to avoid taking certain painkillers.

On financial risks, she said some insurance companies do not insure individuals with one kidney. However, she added that for the recipient, one-year graft survival rates for recipients of living donor transplants have improved from 89 per cent in 1988 to more than 95 per cent today.

While risks to donors remain the same, the post-operative recovery time for kidney donors has come down drastically in the past 20 years, she said. Previously, the donor's kidney used to be removed through a long, rib splitting operation.

The recovery time was long and so was the scar.

However, most public sector hospitals today remove the kidney through key hole surgery (laparoscopic technique).

The scar from this type of surgery is much smaller and the recovery time faster.

Prof Vathsala said: "Now donors can go home after four days in hospital."

This article was first published in The New Paper.