Local man’s kidney donation helps 3 patients in need

Local man’s kidney donation helps 3 patients in need

May 21, 2008 - 10:16PM
BY BRIAN NEWSOME
THE GAZETTE

Luke Perkins saw his kidney as an investment in a life.

And with a return like this, Wall Street would be envious: His donated organ helped not one person but three.

The Colorado Springs computer-chip designer's decision to give a kidney to a stranger set off a chain of events in which three people received transplants at one time. Called a "domino" transplant, the procedure was developed as a way to quickly shorten lengthy kidneytransplant waiting lists.

Perkins and five others underwent surgery Nov. 19 at The Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center in Baltimore, where the concept was conceived. At the time, it was one of about a half-dozen domino transplants that had been performed, said Dr. Robert Montgomery, chief of transplants.

The procedure addresses the fact that kidneys are not universally interchangeable. Often people who need them have family or friends willing to give one, but the prospective donors aren't a biological match.

The concept of a domino donation is based on a pay-it-forward principle that works like this:

A man wants to give a kidney to his wife, but he isn't a match. He agrees to give a kidney to a stranger if someone else will give one to his wife. The recipient of his kidney, in turn, has a willing donor who then gives a kidney to yet another person. And so on.

The transplants are set in motion by a donor willing to give a kidney to anyone in need with no strings attached - the first domino to fall, so to speak.

Enter Perkins.

The 45-year-old was always an avid blood donor, saying he's given "gallons" over the years. But when a family friend required a bone marrow transplant and nearly died while waiting for one, it made him think there was more a person could give.

The night of his friend's surgery, Perkins saw a show on television about kidney donations and Johns Hopkins. The next day, with his friend in mind, he called and requested a donor packet.

"I said, ‘My word, if somebody hadn't stepped up to the plate and gotten tested, this guy would've been dead," Perkins said.

Over the next few months Perkins was tested, which included one group of tests requiring 17 vials of blood. As he cleared the various hurdles, Perkins broke the news to family and close friends that he was going to give up an organ to no particular person. There were no objections, he said.

Four days before the surgery, alone in a Baltimore hotel room, the father of four fretted over the what-ifs - chiefly the risk of losing his life on an operating table for a stranger of unknown health. "I was scared to death," he said. "That was probably the hardest four days of my life."

As Perkins underwent testing to qualify himself as a donor, nearly 1,400 miles away in Cotati, Calif., near San Francisco, 55-year-old John Fredrickson was running out of options. The longtime type 1 diabetic had undergone an experimental pancreas transplant a few years ago. His new pancreas failed, and attempts to save it consequently ravaged his kidneys.

Fredrickson's wife, Liz, was willing to give him a kidney, but doctors found a better match in Perkins. Her kidney, in turn, matched another man's. That man had a friend whose kidney matched a third person. Until then, that third person had been unsuccessful finding a match.

"I can't tell you what that means," Fredrickson said about Perkins' decision to give. "Whatever I say is going to be too small. ... We need more people who can think just beyond, just a little bit beyond themselves."

When Perkins woke up after the four-hour surgery, he gave his family high fives. Now back at work and fully recovered, Perkins remains in touch with Fredrickson and the others involved in the surgeries. All, he said, are doing well.

When Montgomery came up with the idea, transplant workers at Johns Hopkins at first mixed-and-matched patient names on a magnetic board to find ways to make a domino donation happen. Later, the hospital developed a computer program that scours the dozens of people on the list for combinations.

If the procedure that Perkins participated in seems impressive, consider this: In April, Montgomery led a six-way transplant. Nine surgical teams used six operating rooms to accommodate the dozen patients over 10 hours.

Other hospitals are now doing domino transplants, and Montgomery is working to develop a national domino matching program. If the concept of kidney swapping becomes more widespread, he said, as many as 2,000 additional people could be removed from the living transplant list each year.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0198 OR BRIAN.NEWSOME@GAZETTE.COM

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