Objective: Kidney transplantation is the most effective treatment of end-stage renal failure. The first successful kidney transplantation was performed in 1958 in USA. Now there are many transplantation centers in the world today. Kidney transplantations from the cadavers are not enough to satisfy the need. Live organ donors are seen as the most important sources nowadays. We aim to indicate health anxiety levels and quality of life of living kidney donors, who were applied unilateral nephrectomy. Determining health anxiety levels and quality of life of the donors and providing psychological support if needed may increase the adaptation of donors to their daily life.
Methods: Thirty donors were applied unilateral nephrectomy in Ataturk University Medical Faculty Hospital and participated to the study. Sociodemographic data of the donors were recorded. Short-form -36 (SF-36) was used to evaluate quality of life of the donors and scores were compared with standardized scores for Turkish community. Health Anxiety Inventory-Short Form was used to evaluate health anxiety levels of donors and healthy volunteers and results were compared within groups. In the data analysis, IBM SPSS (V.21) was used. The normality of data was checked with Shapiro Wilk Test. Independent two types of t-tests were used for the analysis of data, which were normal. Chi-square analysis is used for the categorical analysis of data. Statistical significance level was accepted as p<0.05 for all evaluations.
Results: The average scores of physical function, physical role, social function, pain, emotional role of the donors were lower than the norm values Turkish community standard. There was no statistically significant difference between the donors in terms of general health, vitality, mental health and Turkish community standard outcomes. Health anxiety levels of the donors were found to be higher than healthy volunteers.
Conclusion: Our study shows that quality of life of the donors was generally lower than Turkish Community Standard values, and health anxiety levels of the donors were also higher compared with healthy volunteers. Therefore, providing social and psychiatric supports to the donors before and after the transplantation, and to find out the factors, which increases quality of life of the donors, in the future studies might help donors to live a more comfortable life after transplantation. This can also raise the number of people, who are planning kidney donation.