A meeting with Jake Tedaldi

We met with Jake Tedaldi, a veterinarian based in Newton, MA, who is winner of Boston Magazine's 2006 "Best of Boston" award for veterinarian.

Dr. Tedaldi is a great veterinarian not only because of his expertise with pets but also because we felt that he has a deep understading of pet owners' needs. Dr. Tedaldi don't have a clinic, but pays personal visits to pets all around the Boston area.

He told us that there is an increasing number of pets, especially cats, with kidneys problems, and there is not really a treatment. In fact, there is not dialysis for pets. Owners have to prevent the problem. A solution exists, and that impressed us. Angell Medical Center in Boston do transplants, but it is not so popular. In fact .... who is the lucky donor?
The donor is normally coming from a research facility or is a rescue pet, and in need of a home. You enter the clinic with one cat, and you go home with two cats and two kidneys, one each.
Kidney transplant is easier to perform with cats than with dogs, also because of the easier genetic match.
Ethical questions are probably without an answer - a pet can't choose to be a donor. Anyway, it seems that both pets can recover well from the operation.

The most complete website I found about the kidney transplant is about cats:
http://www.felinecrf.com/trans0.htm