Washington Mayor Marion Barry was admitted to Howard University Hospital Thursday to prepare for a kidney transplant scheduled the next day.

 

The former mayor and current District of Columbia Council member has been undergoing dialysis for the past 12 weeks. He has battled diabetes and high blood pressure for 20 years. Last April, he found out that he would need the kidney transplant. The donor, “almost a perfect match,” is a longtime female friend of the former mayor, whose name has not been made public.

 

“He has been truly blessed to have found a matching donor; a woman who is a District resident, age 47 [and] a living donor,” Natalie William, Barry spokeswoman said.

 

The surgery, scheduled for 2 p.m. will be performed by Dr. Clive O. Callender, chairman of the Howard University Hospital surgery department and founder of the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program.

 

The surgery comes at a time when prosecutors are seeking to have Barry jailed for failing to file his 2007 federal and local tax returns. They say it was the eighth time in nine years that Barry failed to file.

 

“It is not acceptable for any citizen to shirk a basic civil duty, let alone a former mayor and a current city councilman,” the prosecutors’ motion stated.

 

Barry said his medical condition distracted him from filling his overdue taxes on time.

 

According to the National Kidney Foundation, the number of people with renal failure keeps growing at an astronomical rate, 90,000 new cases per year, mostly due to an increase in cases of diabetes and obesity, two main factors leading to kidney failure. Last year, 8,816 kidney transplants were done with organs from deceased donors and 4,927 from living donors, making kidneys the most commonly transplanted organ in the United States, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS. An important function of the kidneys is to help the body get rid of waste products and excess fluid.

 

The fact that Barry had the chance of finding a living donor is one in a million. “This is a wonderful act, now more than ever, because the waiting list for a kidney is about five years. I think that a second chance at life is a tremendous gift,” Callender said.

 

What are Barry’s chances after this surgery? Experts believe that for most patients, the chance of survival is greater with a new kidney than with continued dialysis. However, complications might appear and the most worrisome are infections at the place of incisions, John Roberts, professor of surgery at the University of California at San Francisco and president of the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, said.

 

Moreover, a study released in July last year in the journal The Lancet suggested that the success of a kidney transplant may depend on gender. To be more specific, women who receive kidneys from males have a higher rate of graft failure than other donor-recipient combinations.

 

A possible explanation could be that male kidneys are larger and have a higher number of nephrons (the basic structural and functional unit of the kidneys), which make them fit more into a male recipient. On the other hand, women may not need as many nephrons and could benefit from female kidneys. However, the percentage of failure due to this particular reason is very low.