"Old age is not necessarily a barrier to kidney donation. A new study has found a kidney transplanted from a deceased yearold can be as effective as one from a person  years younger. Generally guidelines classify donors older than  as extended criteria donors but shortages have led to using these donors more frequently. Italian researchers retrospectively studied  kidney transplants grouping the donors according to whether they were in their s s s or s. Recipients were at most seven years older or younger than the donors. The study is in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. In an average followup of five years they found that the rate of unusable donor kidneys and the longterm outcomes of recipients varied little among the first three age groups  around  percent of the organs had to be discarded and the fiveyear survival was about  percent Advertisement With donors over  survival outcomes were similar but the discard rate increased sharply to  percent. The senior author Dr. Luigi Biancone an associate professor of nephrology at the University of Turin said that using the elderly obviously increases the number of available organs. Transplanting kidneys from elderly donors to elderly patients he added is an advantage for these patients in longterm survival compared with remaining on dialysis."