(Chicago, IL) -- Good news for kidney donors. A new study says healthy Americans who donate a kidney aren't at any higher risk of dying than anyone else. A team headed by a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore began tracking more than 80-thousand living kidney donors in 1994. Their fates were compared to nine-thousand non-donors. Those who donated one of their two kidneys had the same death rate as the non-donors. The only blip on that radar occurred within the fragile first 90 days after surgery, when 25 people died. Those dying were slightly more likely to be male than female, and also a little more likely to be African American or Hispanic than white. With 80-thousand Americans on waiting lists for a new kidney, researchers are hoping to reassure potential donors there's no risk to their long-term health. Of the 17-thousand kidney transplants each year, some six-thousand come from living donors. The findings are published in the "Journal of the American Medical Association."
