Giving While Living: Fast Facts About Living Organ Donors

April 21st, 2025
3 minute read

By renewing our driver’s license at the DMV, most of us are aware of the process of registering to become an organ donor should the worst come to pass. But there is another group of organ donors—living donors—who are helping relatives, friends, and even strangers by donating a kidney or part of their liver. Living donors who choose to give a kidney—the most commonly donated organ—can live a full life with the remaining kidney. Living liver donors can regenerate their liver, with the organ growing back to nearly its original size. This allows donors to give the gift of life without sacrificing their own quality of life.

In 2024, 7,030 people in the U.S. received organs from living donors, and the Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Transplant Center offers a level of expertise and innovation found only among national leaders in organ transplantation. Living donors save recipients precious time—often they can receive their organ in less than a year—and they are removed from the national transplant list, where more than 100,000 Americans await organ donations. Eighty-six percent of the candidates on that list are waiting for a kidney.

Living donors can choose who receives their organ, known as a directed donation, or give to a stranger (a nondirected donation). They must be age 18 or older, and in good physical and mental health. As part of the screening process, they will undergo a physical exam, lab tests, screenings for cancer and other conditions, a mental health evaluation, and have other discussions around the risks and benefits of living donation.

Here are other things you should know about giving while living:

Most living donors continue to enjoy normal and healthy lives after they have recovered from surgery. Some kidney donors even report feeling so good, they almost forget they donated an organ.

You don’t have to be in perfect health or young to donate. It’s true that uncontrolled conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure will prevent you from becoming an organ donor, but living donors go through thorough medical and psychological exams to make sure they’re healthy enough to donate. There’s no age limit for donors.

The risk of kidney failure after you donate a kidney is low. However, if it does happen, you will be prioritized for transplant on the national wait list.

You don’t have to be wealthy to be a living donor. Donors don’t pay for the costs associated with evaluation or surgery. The recipient’s insurance covers the cost of the living donation.

Most donor testing can be done locally. If you need to travel for the surgery and require financial help, you may qualify for donor financial assistance from The National Living Donor Assistance Center.

Laparoscopy or robotic-assisted surgery is the preferred surgical method for kidney donors. Transplant surgery is a major surgical procedure, and as with any surgery, there are risks. Barnes-Jewish minimizes those risks with a comprehensive evaluation process and extensive experience performing kidney donor surgery. Laparoscopy and robotic-assisted surgery, which Barnes-Jewish offer, are much less invasive than traditional open surgery. Patients generally have a shorter hospital stay and faster recovery time.

On average, living donors stay in the hospital one to two nights post-surgery. They typically recover within a month of the surgery.

Everyone is a match for someone. If you find that you’re not a match for your intended recipient, you still might be a match for someone else. Barnes-Jewish Hospital participates in kidney paired donation. This process helps identify another donor-recipient pair whose organs do not match one another, but whose kidneys do match the patient’s in the other pair. Each donor gives a kidney to the other person’s intended recipient.