What is living kidney donation?

Each year in the United States, about 6,000 people voluntarily donate one of their healthy kidneys to a friend, sibling or other loved one. And increasingly, living kidney donations are being completed without either party ever meeting. Most people are born with two kidneys but can live fine with just one. In living kidney donation, a donor voluntarily undergoes surgery and gives a healthy kidney to a patient who needs it due to end-stage renal disease (advance kidney failure that can’t be reversed).