Ontario man receives Guinness World Record for oldest person to receive kidney transplant

An elderly man living in the Greater Toronto Area has just been officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to have ever received a kidney transplant.

An elderly man living in the Greater Toronto Area has just been officially recognized by Guinness World Records as the oldest person to have ever received a kidney transplant.

Walter Tauro, from Markham, was 87 years old when he underwent the procedure at St. Michael’s Hospital in June 2023. Months later, in March, Guinness World Records awarded Tauro with the title of oldest kidney transplant recipient for a male. 

Tauro told CTV News Toronto during an interview he was on dialysis for four years, going in for hours-long visits every other day for treatment for his kidney disease.

It made him awfully tired and weak, Tauro said, so he considered surgery.

“Everybody said, ‘No, no, you’re too old,” Tauro said Wednesday. “I said, ‘I want to take the risk. If I live, I will be living happy.’ I had a good chance of living, so they gave me a chance.”

The kidney transplant program at the downtown Toronto hospital is a specialized centre for people with severe kidney disease. According to the hospital, in its article about Tauro’s surgery, the senior underwent several assessments and conversations with the hospital before he was eventually cleared for a kidney transplant.

“In our program, it is not the age of the patient that matters it is their overall health,” Meriam Jayoma-Austria, a registered nurse in the kidney transplant program said in the St. Michael’s article. “Walter went through the program seamlessly, from his heart assessments to a bone marrow analysis.”