• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Yup, it blew my mind when I first learned about it.

    Back in high school, I did a kind of medical jobs class that supposedly prepped us for entry into medical training, to help decide if or was right for us, and which fields we might go into. There was more than that, but that was the basic idea.

    The last year of the class was going out and playing tag-along on various jobs. Nursing, radiology, pathology, dentistry, whatever.

    One of the things we got to go to was a transplant unit. Finding out that kidneys (usually) stay in was kinda crazy because the obvious thing is that they’re diseased, maybe dying, so why would you leave them in, wouldn’t that cause trouble down the road?

    Blew all our little minds lol

    • Snowclone@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Afaik it’s a situation where the less things you have to do the better, even if the only benifit is shortening the length of surgery by minute or more, it’s probably saving lives leaving it in as a protocol.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        Pretty much, that’s the explanation given back then.

        Iirc it was phrased more that the risks of complications from removing the less healthy ones and all the blood supply issues that go with that complicat e the surgery in both time and possible unwanted outcomes. So damn near exactly what you said :)

        There’s times it has to be done, but to the best of my knowledge, the majority of cases, the kidneys aren’t doing anything bad, they’re just not working right.