E-Mail PHILADELPHIA - When kidneys are removed from deceased organ donors in the United States, they are often subjected to "procurement biopsies" and are discarded if certain abnormalities are seen in the kidney tissue -- a practice that worsens the already-severe shortage of transplant-eligible kidneys in the country. However, a large portion of the discarded kidneys would function acceptably if transplanted, according to a new study from a team led by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Paris Translational Research Center for Organ Transplantation. In the study, published today in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the researchers analyzed biopsy data on a series of 1,103 kidneys discarded in the U.S. between 2015 and 2016. They found that 493 of these kidneys could be matched, in terms of biopsy-evaluated quality and other donor characteristics, to 493 kidneys that were actually transplanted in France, where transplant practice is less restrictive.