At present, there are about 5 million patients with end-stage renal disease or uremia in China, and the number is increasing at a rate of about 120,000 every year. For them, the only way to meet the metabolic needs of the body and delay life is to take renal replacement therapy, i.e. dialysis or kidney transplantation. However, at present, dialysis can only partially replace kidney functions, and some other functions such as endocrine functions (erythropoietin secretion, vitamin D activation, etc.) cannot be achieved by dialysis. Moreover, dialysis has many restrictions on patients’ diet, life and work. In contrast, kidney transplantation not only can completely restore the function of kidney, but also can live like a normal person, and the quality of life has been greatly improved. In clinical practice, analysis in many aspects also shows that the treatment effect of kidney transplantation on uremia is significantly better than dialysis treatment. Therefore, for patients with end-stage renal disease, kidney transplantation is the best choice to restore their health and vitality to life. However, sadly, the number of people who can receive kidney transplantation treatment in China is very limited every year, accounting for only a small percentage of all uremic patients, mainly due to the lack of kidney sources. Therefore, it is crucial to make kidney transplantation benefit more uremic patients, improve the success rate of kidney transplantation and prolong the survival of the transplanted kidney. Living relative kidney transplantation provides an effective way to solve the above problems. It includes donation between parents and brothers or even couples. Due to the genetic and immunological relationship, relative kidney transplantation has many advantages over cadaveric kidney donation: (1) It helps to alleviate the shortage of cadaveric kidney donation; (2) It allows flexible scheduling of surgery according to the recipient’s needs, without the need to wait for a long time for a kidney source; (3) Donor kidney can be selected according to the ideal tissue matching result; (4) Donor kidney removal is less traumatic, with short heat and cold ischemia time. The quality of the donor kidney is good, and the renal function can be restored to normal early after surgery, and the possibility of acute tubular necrosis is extremely low; (5) the amount of postoperative immunosuppressants is small, the toxic effects on other organs are small, and the incidence of infection is low, resulting in a high long-term survival rate of the donor kidney; (6) the short-term and long-term postoperative outcomes of the recipient are better than those of the cadaveric donor kidney; (7) the cost to the patient is low; (8) the donor kidney can be emotionally fulfilling. Also, living relative kidney transplantation is safe for the donor. Since a person has two kidneys, only 1/4 of them are working under normal circumstances, so after donating one kidney, the remaining one can still be guaranteed to work and rest in turn, which is not harmful to the body and will not affect the function and health of the donor’s body. About 33% of kidney transplants in Western developed countries come from relatives, while less than 1% in China. Since the first case of kidney transplantation by relatives in China in 1972 to the end of 2000, only 37 medical units in China have performed 181 kidney transplants by relatives. In view of the above advantages, experts are now urgently calling on all sectors of society to open up the concept and promote relative kidney transplantation so that more patients with end-stage renal disease around us can get a new life. It is believed that “blood is thicker than water” and “kinship”, a traditional Chinese virtue, will be newly interpreted in more uremic patients. The Kidney Transplant Center of Wuhan Union Medical College Hospital has successfully completed nearly 150 cases since the first living donor kidney transplant in 2003, and has accumulated a lot of clinical experience. After receiving a kidney donor from a relative, the function of the transplanted kidney and the postoperative quality of life of the patients have reached a new level compared with the previous traditional kidney transplantation.