A 55-year-old man with an 82-year-old kidney

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A 55-year-old man with an 82-year-old kidney

You would never guess by looking at him that Bill Thompson is a medical marvel: a 55-year-old man with an 82-year-old kidney.

Thompson received the kidney 40 years ago during a transplant surgery at Children's Memorial Hospital that saved his life and made medical history. The 1966 procedure was one of the first kidney transplants from a living, unrelated donor to a child. There is little doubt that without this pioneering procedure, Thompson would not be here today.
An unprecedented gift

As a boy, Thompson contracted a kidney disease called glomerulo-nephritis. When it led to kidney failure at age 15, he was rushed by ambulance from Peoria to Children's Memorial and placed on dialysis . Thompson needed a new kidney to survive, but none of his relatives was a match. A priest had already administered last rites when his mother's childhood friend, Verda Walton, came forward and offered the ultimate gift. Her telegram read, “You have a kidney. Mine.”

At the time, transplants from living relatives were rare, and transplants from unrelated donors were nearly unprecedented. The headline of 1966 news story about Walton reads, “Some call her a kook, but she may have saved a life.”
Risk pays off

In 1966, the kidney transplantation program at Children's Memorial was only 2 years old. At that time, there were no pediatric transplant surgeons, so a cardiovascular-thoracic surgeon performed the operation, which was successful. Thompson's chances for survival into adulthood stood at only 20 percent, while the likelihood of organ rejection was nearly 70 percent.

Thompson and family

Bill Thompson is the longest known surviving recipient of a kidney from an unrelated donor.

Despite the odds, 40 years later, Thompson's kidney continues to function well, decades beyond the average life span of a transplanted kidney, which is 15 to 20 years. He is the longest known surviving recipient of a kidney from an unrelated donor, according to University of California at Los Angeles Immunogenetics Center.

In 1966, Bill Thompson's chances for survival into adulthood stood at 20 percent. Today, children who undergo kidney transplants have 95 percent survival rate five years after surgery.
A full life

Today, Thompson is a father and grandfather of six living in Nashville, Tennessee. He has been a professional racecar driver, a pilot and a senior executive at a medical equipment company. He says that without Walton and the staff at Children's Memorial, life as he has known it would not have been possible.

http://www.childrensmemorial.org/depts/siragusa/feature.aspx?sID=2760&pID=1318