Docs' record has a purpose
BALTIMORE - A transplant surgeon who completed an unprecedented eight-way kidney swap this week said yesterday that he believes such intricate, multistate exchanges can drastically reduce the number of patients waiting for eligible donors.
Dr. Robert Montgomery, chief transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and doctors at four hospitals in four states transplanted eight kidneys over three weeks in what he called the largest chain of donations in history.
The last in a series of surgeries was completed Monday night. "We hope this creates a movement that encourages other transplant centers to adopt the model we used," Montgomery said.
The donor pool in the United States could facilitate 1,500 transplants per year if transplant centers nationwide participated in computer modeling that matches donors with recipients, he said.
Multiple-kidney transplants occur when several people who need transplants have friends or relatives who are willing to donate kidneys but aren't compatible. A chain of surgeries is arranged in which each donor is matched with a transplant candidate whom they don't know but is compatible with the kidney being given up. The chain of transplants typically also involve a so-called altruistic donor, who's willing to give a kidney to anyone and is located through a database. *
