(Photo: Tareq Salahuddin)
The event is called a kidney transplant chain. It's a sequence of carefully-timed transplants that match donors and recipients for compatibility. UCLA Health explains:
It starts with an altruistic donor - someone who wants to donate a kidney out of the goodness of his or her heart. That kidney is transplanted into a recipient who had a donor willing to give a kidney, but was not a match. To keep the chain going, the incompatible donor gives a kidney to a patient unknown to him or her who has been identified as a match, essentially "paying it forward." A specialized computer program matches donors and recipients across the country.
For 2 days, doctors in San Francisco completed 18 surgeries carrying out 9 kidney transplants, all of which were successful. It was an unusually complex kidney transplant chain. The Orange County Register explains the challenges involved:
Adding to the logistical hurdles of so many surgeries, kidneys had to be ferried back and forth between the two hospitals. On Friday, two kidneys were sent from California Pacific to UCSF via a special organ transport service and two kidneys were sent from UCSF to California Pacific for a total of four, 3-mile trips. Two trips were made Thursday.
“Everything went as planned,” said Noel Sanchez, spokesman for Donor Network West. The Oakland company specializes in packaging and transporting organs.
-via Ace of Spades HQ
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