February 11, 2009
Four western Pennsylvanians who met just
recently have had a life-changing and life-saving impact on each other as the
first participants in a paired kidney transplantation procedure at Allegheny
General Hospital (AGH).
A growing but still relatively new approach to
kidney transplantation in the United States, paired donation is a process in
which two willing kidney donors who are not appropriate matches for their loved
ones agree to donate their organs to someone else in an exchange that benefits
both pairs.
“This process affords people with end-stage
renal disease another option that may save their lives. Because of the scarcity
of cadaveric donor organs, the average wait for a
suitable kidney in our country is now 2½ years. Living donation, when possible,
helps reduce that time and the paired donation system expands this concept to
open up a much wider pool of potential donors,” said Ngoc
Thai, M.D., Ph.D., Director of Abdominal Transplantation at AGH.
“Living donor organs in general also offer
better outcomes for recipients than kidneys from deceased donors, which further
underscores the importance of the Paired Donation Network’s efforts,” he said.
Dr. Thai said relatives or friends of patients
often are willing to donate a kidney but are unable to for a number of reasons,
usually because the patient’s and donor’s blood types are a mismatch.
In paired donation, recipients essentially
“swap” willing donors. For example, recipient A and willing donor A don’t
match, and recipient B and willing donor B don’t match. Paired donation happens
when donor A matches recipient B, and donor B matches recipient A.
On January 10, 2009, a husband and wife from
Jeannine Haduch, a
48-year-old accountant, was willing but unable to donate a kidney to her
husband, Stanley Haduch, a 57-year-old science
teacher in the City of Pittsburgh School District. Tractor-trailer operator
Earl Flynn, 55, of
In the paired donation, Jeannine Haduch donated a kidney to Mary Benton and Earl Flynn
donated a kidney to Stanley Haduch.
Both recipients had waited more than two years
for a matched donor. They found their matches through enrollment in the Paired
Donation Network, coordinated locally by the Center for Organ Recovery and
Education (CORE).
Dr. Thai performed the surgery on Stanley Haduch and Mary Benton’s surgery was performed by AGH
surgeon Carlos
Vivas, MD. Other key members of the team include
surgeons John
C. Lyne, MD, Marc
Gignac, MD, surgical director of AGH's Living Donor Program, and Gina
Rooker, MD; Tina
Y. Ko, DO, medical director of the living donor
program at AGH; Barbara
J. Carpenter, MD, medical director of the AGH Transplant Center; and Lisa
Hoff, director of operations for the AGH transplant service.
“It’s amazing,” recipient Mr. Haduch said simply of the paired donation.
Mr. Flynn said he has no second thoughts about
his decision. “She’s a good person,” he said of his sister-in-law, Mary Benton.
“I love her and I want to see her live.”
Both pairs signed up for the Paired Donation
Network at the suggestion of AGH living donor advocate Jay Riley.
“A lot of people are waiting for kidney
transplants, and maybe they’re not aware that this alternative exists,” Riley
said. “As more people learn about it, we hope to ultimately reduce the number
of people on the transplant waiting list.”
The four participants first met briefly this
past summer, when the surgery was originally scheduled to take place. The
procedure was initially delayed after doctors discovered Mr. Haduch had arterial blockages that needed to be repaired.
The first successful kidney transplant was
performed more than five decades ago.
A center for kidney transplantation since
1987, AGH transplant specialists have played a prominent role in the
advancement of the field. Surgeons at the hospital were the first in the region
to perform bilateral adult kidney transplantation in 1997 and the first to
remove a kidney from a living donor laparoscopically
in 1998.
Kidney transplantation has become one of the
most common and successful organ transplant procedures, Dr. Thai said.
According to CORE, the number of patients
needing transplants has grown every year for the past 18 years, and the demand
for donors far exceeds the supply.
The Paired Donation Network
(pairedkidneynetwork.org) was founded by Ohio-based kidney transplant programs
and registered its first patients in January 2004 .
The first paired donation happened in November 2004 at Cleveland University
Hospital Case Western. To date, less than 200 paired kidney transplants have
been performed nationwide. A total of 14 such transplants have been performed
since October, 2008.
Now a national program, the Network includes
80 kidney transplant programs in 23 states. It is run by Teresa Braun, a living
kidney donor.