Match up live kidney donors, researcher urges

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A trading scheme among patients with
access to live kidney donors is needed to more readily match
recipients and organs because differing blood types are
blocking transplants, said the authors of a study published on
Tuesday.

A trial program at Johns Hopkins University School of
Medicine that used a trading strategy among patients with
access to live kidney donors resulted in successful transplants
in 21 out of 22 cases over a three-year period, the report
published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
said.

Existing transplant programs match deceased donors with
patients on the waiting list for kidneys — which currently
numbers more than 63,000 patients in the United States alone.

“A similar system now needs to be in place for living
donors,” lead author Dr. Robert Montgomery of Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland, said in a statement.

Between 2,000 and 3,500 U.S. patients suffering from renal
failure have willing live donors, but more than one-third are
blocked from receiving the organs by incompatible blood types
or a condition where the recipient is especially sensitive to
foreign tissue and must be matched carefully, he said.

Montgomery estimated a trading system could successfully
pair off half the patients with access to live donors.

There are several good reasons for creating such a living
donor kidney registry, but ethical dilemmas could arise, an
accompanying editorial in the journal said.

“For example, what if one kidney fails early but the other
functions well?” wrote Arthur Matas and David Sutherland of the
University of Minnesota.

“Kidney transplantation remains a success story, but its
promise and future continue to be threatened by the ongoing
lack of suitable organ donors. While new methods to overcome
this problem are welcome, the transplant community must face up
to the new ethical issues that surround every advance,” the
editorial said.