Maine Medical Center Kidney Transplant: Wait Times & Patient Data

Maine Medical Center has a longstanding living-donor program, with living donors accounting for a substantial share of its kidney transplants.

The program is now using more kidneys from Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD) for deceased-donor transplants. These DCD kidneys make up about 40 to 50 percent of all deceased-donor transplants. DCD kidneys are taken from donors after their heart and circulation have stopped, instead of from donors who are declared dead based on brain function while their heart is still beating. Since these kidneys go without blood flow for a short time before being recovered, they may take longer to start working after the transplant. Some patients may need temporary dialysis while the kidney recovers. This could explain why Maine Medical Center has a higher rate of dialysis in the first week after deceased-donor transplants. Needing temporary dialysis while a transplanted kidney starts working does not necessarily mean it will have long-term problems. Maine’s strong early graft survival rates provide reassurance: most of these kidneys were functioning after the initial recovery period.

MaineHealth reported in 2022 that the number of people waiting for a kidney transplant in Maine had more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic. Transplant volume did not increase at the same pace, creating a growing imbalance between the number of patients waiting and the number receiving transplants.