It’s well established that a reduction in kidney function (GFR) significantly increases one’s risk of cardiovascular disease and death. It’s all known that folks in all stages of chronic kidney disease are at risk for heart troubles.
Finally, a few researchers got together and decided to look at how living kidney donor’s hearts change post-nephrectomy.
“We hypothesised that the reduction in GFR associated with nephrectomy causes increased left ventricular (LV) mass, impaired LV function and increased aortic stiffness.”
“Compared to controls, nephrectomy in donors was associated with increases in [left ventricular] mass ; [left ventricular] mass-volume ratio and [carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity] PWV ; and reductions in aortic distensibility [flexibiity; ie. more stiffness] and global circumferential strain”
“Change in GFR independently predicted the change in LV mass (R2=0.26; P<0.01).”
“Nephrectomy causes concentric LV remodelling and dysfunction, increased aortic stiffness and adverse changes in[cardiovascular] CV biomarkers. These findings suggest reduced GFR is an independent causative CV risk factor and that donors should be under long-term CV review.”
Moody, W., Ferro, C., Edwards, N., Chue, C., Lin, E., Taylor, R., Cockwell, P., Steeds, R., & Townend, J. (2015). EFFECTS OF NEPHRECTOMY ON CARDIOVASCULAR STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN LIVING KIDNEY DONORS Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 65 (10) DOI: 10.1016/S0735-1097(15)62150-7
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