Dubai, July 4 -- The traditional way to treat people with advanced kidney disease has been to use dialysis to remove waste from the blood while patients wait several years for kidneys from deceased organ donors. At Mayo Clinic, transplant surgeon Dr. Mikel Prieto and colleagues advocate for a different approach called preemptive transplantation: Kidneys from living donors are allowing many people with advanced kidney disease to receive transplants before their kidneys deteriorate so much that they need dialysis.

Chronic kidney disease afflicts roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide and causes millions of deaths each year, according to the International Society of Nephrology. Kidneys filter waste and excess fluids from the blood that the body t...