About 30% of patients are submitted to kidney transplant because of diabetes, a common disease which compromises pancreas function and alters the metabolism. Diabetes can be controlled by taking insulin. However, as time goes by, severe complications may develop, the most common of which are: increased arterial pressure, heart diseases, stroke, eye diseases, blood vessel diseases, particularly of the lower extremities, nervous diseases (alterations in the peripheral nervous system) and, most of all, kidney damage. Kidney failure leads to increased toxins in the body, fluid retention and increased levels of some minerals in the blood, which could be lethal.

There are three options for end-stage kidney failure: two kinds of dialysis (hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis), or kidney transplant. The latter allows for re-establishment of kidney function without resort to chronic dialysis treatment for survival. With respect to 15 years ago, kidney transplants nowadays have a much higher chance of success, and, thanks to new immunosuppressants, it is possible to combine better rejection control with lower toxicity for the organism.

Survival rate of kidney transplanted patients from cadaveric donors one year after the surgery is approximately 95%, and proper organ function is 91% for adults and 100% for children (treated with immunosuppressive therapy and FK 506 as main medication). Thanks to FK 506 and other recent immunosuppressants, the quality of life of kidney transplanted patients has been vastly improved, and their life expectancy is certainly higher than that of patients on chronic dialysis. While dialysis was once used for relatively young patients, nowadays, owing to the increased average life, elderly patients undergo chronic dialysis. As a consequence, the number of patients who, though elderly, can be added to the kidney transplant waiting list is increasing. Unfortunately, however, the increased number of transplant candidates does not meet an increase in donations and cadaveric organ procurements, thus causing waiting times for transplant candidate patients in the list to expand.

As a general rule, the transplant procedure lasts 2 to 5 hours, and can be performed on patients whose age ranges from a few months to over 70 years. The transplanted kidney is placed in a different area as compared to the native kidney, i.e. in one of the two iliac fossae, without opening the peritoneum. The renal artery is anastomized to the iliac artery and the renal vein to the recipient's iliac vein. In the end, the ureter is implanted in the bladder, so that urine can easily drain into the latter. In most cases, native kidneys are not removed, unless it is believed they could cause subsequent clinical complications.