by Michael Woodhead  

Increasing numbers of Australian patients who need a kidney transplant are heading overseas to get them from paid donors or executed prisoners, nephrologists say.  

And while the practice was risky in the 1990s, patients now have outcomes comparable to patients who receive kidney transplants in Australia, a study by Dr Yvonne Shen and colleagues at the department of nephrology at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney has shown.  

Renal services in Sydney and Illawarra found that seven patients went overseas for transplants in the 1990s, and one year graft survival rate was 57%.  

The numbers going overseas increased to 20 between 2000-2009, with graft survival similar to Australian rates of over 90%, Dr Shen will tell the annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology in Tasmania next week. Immunosuppresive regimes are also similar to those used in Australia, she reports.  

Most of the commercial transplants were done in China, but several were obtained from donors in India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Russia and Greece.