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Transplant candidates advance on waiting list when relatives donate kidney
Last Updated: 2001-04-16 13:45:59 EDT (Reuters Health)
By Anthony J. Brown, MD
WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) - A new organ-donation incentive program allows persons waiting for a kidney transplant to move up on the list when a relative, with an incompatible kidney, donates to another recipient.
The donation program, known as "Hope Through Sharing", was introduced in February at the New England Medical Center in Boston.
Dr. Michael Angelis, a transplant surgeon at the hospital, told Reuters Health that "if a transplant donor is not blood-compatible with a relative awaiting transplant then they could donate to a matched person at the top of the cadaver kidney waiting list and the relative would then move to that position." He added that "it does not affect the waiting times for other people, so it is really a win-win situation."
"In this region there are about 4000 people on the kidney transplant waiting list," Dr. Angelis said. "The waiting times, especially for O-blood types, are 3 to 4 years," he pointed out. "The program gives more and more people the opportunity to be an organ donor."
"So far, we have done two cases through the program," Dr. Angelis said. "In the first case, a mother was unable to donate a kidney to her 13-year-old son," he stated. The boy underwent kidney transplantation a few weeks after her donation. Otherwise, he would have probably spent 2 years on dialysis awaiting transplantation, Dr. Angelis noted.
In the second case, a women donated her kidney and advanced her husband's position on the waiting list. He is currently awaiting transplantation.
"Before offering this program to patients and their relatives, it is important to determine that the recipient will, in fact, be able to receive a transplant," Dr. Angelis emphasized. The relatives of patients who are unlikely to receive or benefit from a transplant should be discouraged from entering the program, he said.
Dr. Angelis noted that "the program is currently approved for the 15 kidney programs in region I." However, "once the success of the program is established here, we expect the program to be adopted by other regions across the country," he stated. "The program is currently limited to kidney transplants but it could potentially be applied to lung and liver transplants," he added.
-Westport Newsroom 203 319 2700
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