With a significant organ shortage here in the U.S., thousands in need of a kidney are looking to live donation.In tonight's Health Watch:A new study has some reassuring news for those thinking about donating a kidney.Catherine Dolf has more.Dr. Dorry Segev says: "Kidney donation remains very important in our attempts to get people off of dialysis and off of the kidney waiting list."Robert Imes is off the list and back on the job, at the Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore after receiving a live donor kidney.Robert Imes says: "Donating a kidney is one of those life changing moments that you can do for another person."Judy Payne did change someone's life, becoming a live donor in an operation similar to this one at Johns Hopkins.Payne says: "It didn't seem to be that hard of a decision, I like to give to others, I like to share what I can of my blessings."Dr. Segev says: "What we found is that live donation is very safe, the risk of dying from donating a kidney is three in ten thousand which is much lower than the risk of almost any other operation that you can undergo."Dr. Dorry Segev from Johns Hopkins University Medical School and co-authors studied more than 80 thousand live kidney donors nationwide from April 1994 thru march of last year.Dr. Segev says: "If you match live donors to other healthy people in the population there is no increase risk of dying down the road attributable to having only one kidney instead of two."The study appears in this week's JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association.Dr. Segev says: "If we look by subgroup there is a slightly higher risk of dying from donating a kidney if you're male and there's a slightly higher risk of dying from donating a kidney if you're African-American."But researchers say those percentages on average are still quite low and also that the proportion of donors over 50 has almost doubled.Dr. Segev says: "As we start to allow older patients to donate, as we start to allow other people with other kinds of diseases to donate kidneys we want to make sure this procedure remains safe for them and that they don't take any risks long term by donating a kidney."Judy Payne says: "I did it and others do it and the more that you do it you know the fewer people have to live um in pain or die too young without one kidney."