Local couple makes Texas history

[okarol]

Local couple makes Texas history

 30-May-08, 01:37 PM

A local Ingleside couple makes Texas history for the first living kidney transplant exchange between another couple that is from Temple.

Alicia White, 35, received a kidney transplant from Ingleside resident Karen Huegler, 45, and Alicia's Husband, Steve white, 36, was a donor to Karen's husband, Ronnie Huegler, Sr., 47.

Alicia from Temple had end-stage renal disease due to an unknown cause and has been on dialysis since September 2006.

Ronnie also had the end-stage of renal disease, which was a result of his type 2 Diabetes. He has been in need of a kidney since 2004.

“Doctors from Texas Transplant Institute and the kidney transplant team at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital in San Antonio performed the first paired kidney transplant simultaneously in the same facility,” according to a press release.

There were more than 30 medical personnel working in the four operating rooms during the procedure.

The donor exchange program is a new, groundbreaking way for people seeking donor organs to obtain them.

“The program matches living donors who wish to donate their kidney to a loved one but cannot because of blood or tissue incompatibility. Two incompatible pairs are matched, and the donors are exchanged, providing two kidney patients with a living donation rather than having to wait for a deceased donor from the national wait list,” the press release said.

With this program in place, there will be greater amount of organs available from living donors.

Since 1984, more than 2,600 kidney transplants have been performed, which is projected to include over 1,100 living donor transplants.

There are only a few similar programs in the United States that offer the paired exchange testing and surgery, and it will greatly reduce the amount of time people will have to spend on a waitlist for the procedure to be performed.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), “74,746 people throughout the country currently are on the waiting list for a kidney. In Texas, 6,110 people are awaiting kidneys with 2,693 of them are in San Antonio and South Texas.”

Francis Wright, M.D., solid organ transplant program director and Adam Bingaman, M.D., director of the paired exchange program and of the incompatibility program and transplant surgeon, were available to answer questions and inform those interested about the program and its procedures.

The presentation took place last Wednesday at the Texas Transplant Institute in San Antonio.

-- http://www.theinglesideindex.com/articles/2008/05/28/news/news04.txt