Houston woman receives gift from a stranger: a kidney

Houston woman receives gift from a stranger: a kidney

By TODD ACKERMAN
Oct. 16, 2008, 11:28PM

A Georgia man has given one of his kidneys to a Texas woman he's never met, the latest example of a nationwide pay-it-forward movement that could shorten the waiting time for such transplants.

Brenda Chapa, whose sister-in-law will now give a kidney to a yet-to-be-determined stranger, was recovering Thursday at Memorial Hermann Hospital, overwhelmed at Carey Barrett's generosity.

"That someone would make such a sacrifice to help a total stranger, I get emotional just talking about it," said Chapa, 41, choking up before Wednesday's surgery. "I'm very, very grateful — and eager to meet him."

The two are scheduled to meet sometime next week.

Barrett, 42, and Chapa represent the first link in an expected chain of transplants in which people donate their kidneys to strangers. Three other such chains have resulted in 16 transplants, and all are still going strong.

The movement, started last year by an Ohio transplant doctor in response to a shortage of kidneys, begins with an altruistic donor like Barrett. That person gives a kidney to a stranger who had lined up a donor — almost always a relative or friend — who turned out to be incompatible. And that donor,
in turn, gives to a stranger with whom he or she matches.

The cycle continues with the second recipient's incompatible donor giving to a stranger in the same predicament, and so on and so on. Because it can continue indefinitely, it is known as the Never-Ending Altruistic Donor Chain.

The movement promises to help ease the national waiting list for kidneys, now encompassing about 75,000 people. Fewer than 17,000 transplants a year are performed, nearly two-thirds with organs from cadavers and most of the rest from people who know the patient, relatives or friends whose blood and tissue type match. Many patients never get a transplant, because loved ones who volunteer don't match their blood and tissue type.

Now, strangers are making a difference.

"It shows how a small beginning can lead to a big result," said Dr. Michael Rees, a transplant surgeon at Ohio's University of Toledo Medical Center and the founder of the nonprofit Alliance for Paired Donation, which coordinates and funds the Never-Ending Altruistic Donor Chain. "It magnifies human altruism, the basis for organ donation."

Rees thinks the movement could result in an additional 3,000 kidney transplants a year if it becomes mainstream.

The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that allocates organs from deceased donors through the U.S. government, is studying transplant chains and is expected to make the approach available at all kidney donor centers as early as next year.

Even now, Rees' alliance has eight more altruistic donors waiting to give one of their kidneys to a stranger.

A handful of other organizations are experimenting with chains of their own, though all of those are limited to a few kidney transplants performed on a single day. The groups have accounted for about 40 transplants in all.

Transplants are often the best treatment when kidneys begin to fail. Although people are born with two kidneys, one can provide normal function in both donor and recipient, because the organ grows in size and capacity when operating alone.

Thousands die waiting
For kidney patients who find no match, the wait for an organ can last as long as four or five years. More than 4,000 patients die annually while waiting.

Chapa asked to go on the kidney waiting list in February after more than two years on dialysis. Ten loved ones had volunteered to give her one of their kidneys. But only a sister's blood and tissue type matched, and she turned out to have kidney disease of her own.

"We thought it was hopeless," said Cesar Chapa, her husband.

But Christine Olascuaga, Brenda Chapa's willing but incompatible sister-in-law, found the Alliance for Paired Donation program on the Internet and suggested it to her. By late spring, Chapa's name had been entered in its registry.

Meanwhile in Fayetteville, Ga., Barrett saw a television report about the alliance's first chain of donors — then responsible for four transplants and now for 10 — and found himself intrigued.

An American Red Cross official who knows the value of donating, Barrett thought volunteering would be a "wonderful opportunity to make a difference."

On Wednesday, only Barrett's wife seemed nervous, admitting it took "some convincing" to get her to come around to his point of view. Now, she said, her 15-year-old daughter, an aspiring doctor, wants to donate a kidney as soon as she's old enough.

An hour later, Barrett was wheeled into an operating room and stripped of his left kidney. The organ was taken to the next room and transplanted into Chapa. All told, the two operations took about four hours.

On Thursday, the recovering patients drifted in and out of sleep.

"It was a privilege to be a part of the surgery," said Dr. Charles Van Buren, the Memorial Hermann doctor who performed the transplant. "How often do you get to be involved in a sacrifice that's the perfect expression of a man who believes in helping his fellow man?"

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