In many ways 19-year-old, Brenna Khalen is typical of kids her age. She is living at home in Newport Beach, working and going to college. But unlike most kids her age, Brenna is a now a medical first.
Brenna was born with a disease known as tuberous sclerosis, which affected her kidneys. At age 11, she had both kidneys surgically removed and was placed on dialysis until she could receive a donated kidney.
The transplant happened in 2013 and Brenna "has done extremely well," said Dechu Puliyanda, MD Cedars-Sinai's director of Pediatric Nephrology and Transplant Immunology, who oversees Brenna's care.
Like other transplant patients, Brenna is on daily anti-rejection medication and is monitored regularly by Dr. Puliyanda and Cedars-Sinai's transplant team for signs of organ rejection. The traditional marker to check the stability of the organ graft is serum creatinine and Brenna's levels have been perfect.
Creatinine is a waste product produced by the body's muscles. It is removed from the body by the kidneys, which filter it from the blood and release it into the urine. A test that measures the creatinine in a patient's blood is widely considered a good indicator of how well the kidneys are functioning.
But late last year, eight years after Brenna's transplant, Dr. Puliyanda began suspecting some kidney injury because of medication reactions.
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