Living donors (LDs) require time away from daily activities and work for the surgery and recovery. In general, LDs are counselled that they should be fully recovered and able to return to work in 6 wks. We sought to provide granular data on resuming normal activity and returning to work after donor laparoscopic nephrectomy.

Between 2005 and 2014, 906 LDs were sent questionnaires at 6 mos post-donation to assess recovery.

Of the 906, 653(72%) responded. For respondents, the mean age at donation was 43.6±11 years; 64% were female, 93% white, 50% related, and 81% reported education beyond high school. Non-responders were younger at donation, donated longer ago, non-white, male, students and those unemployed at the time of donation, and a greater proportion related to their recipient (p <0.05 for each).

Time to resume daily activities (walking, driving a car, shopping for groceries) is shown in Table 1a, by employment status at the time of donation. Overall 79% had normal activity at 4 wks; 94% by 5-6 wks; and 6% took >6 wks. Table 1b shows return to work by employment at donation. Overall, 46% had returned to work/ school at 4 wks and 77% at 6 wks. Mean time to fully return was 5.4±3 wks; median 5 wks. However, 24% required >6 wks before returning to work; 6% >10 wks (of those employed full or part-time, 25% >6 wks, 10% >8 wks). 37% thought recovery was somewhat or much longer than they had expected (Table 2).

Conclusion: Whereas most LDs return to normal activities fairly quickly, a significant number did not fully return to work for >6 wks; 37 % reported recovery was longer than expected. Our data suggests that information given at evaluation should acknowledge that some LDs require >6 wks to fully recover.

Table 1. Time (wks) to return to activities by employment status pre-donation

Table 2. Recovery time: Expectation vs. reality (%)

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