Paired transplants create a bond among four people

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Paired transplants create a bond among four people
By RANDY GRIFFITH
The Tribune-Democrat

PITTSBURGH — Earl Flynn of Portage did not hesitate to volunteer one of his kidneys when his wife’s sister, 49-year-old Mary Benton of Beaverdale, found out hers were failing.

But Flynn was not a match for Benton.

He was a match for kidney patient Stanley Haduch, 47, of suburban Pittsburgh. And Haduch’s wife, Jeannine, was a willing donor and match for Benton.

The two donors were connected to the two patients through Paired Donation Network, and on Jan. 10, Allegheny General Hospital surgeons performed the hospital’s first paired transplant operation.

“I thank God. He worked it all out,” Benton said Wednesday during press conference at Allegheny General.

“This gave me my husband back,” Jeannine Haduch, 48, said.

Flynn, 55, said he had no second thoughts when he found out his generosity could be directed to a stranger.

“I figured two more people are being helped,” Flynn said.

Benton said she tried to control herself when told the double match had been identified last summer. She had been on dialysis for about two years and faced disappointment when a another potential donation didn’t work out.

“I held my breath,” Benton said. “In the back of my mind, I thought, ‘We are going to see. When it finally happens, I’ll go: Yea!’ ”

The four share a special bond, Jeannine Haduch said.

“The first time we met was when we came in for blood work,” she said. “We all just clicked right away. It’s almost like you have two more family members.”

Jeannine Haduch has returned to her job as an accountant, but Flynn is taking a couple more weeks off before he goes back to work as a truck driver for Say-Core Inc. of Portage.

Both kidney recipients said they will take it slow for the next few months. Benton was a Cambria County victims advocate, but she said she may look for a less-stressful job.

The paired donor option could expand the number of patients who receive kidney transplants, said Dr. Mark Gignac, surgical director of Allegheny General’s living donor program. Despite an ongoing campaign to enroll organ donors through driver’s license registration and other means, there is little growth.

“The number of cadaver kidney transplants has remained fairly stable over the last few years,” Gignac said. “In order to get more people to donate, we have to get the word out.”

The Paired Donation Network was founded in Ohio in 2004. It has grown to a national program, but fewer than 200 paired transplants have been performed nationwide.

“Surprisingly, it hasn’t caught on,” Gignac said. “If more programs participated it could become a more viable option. Hopefully, we can improve the rate of transplantation.”

The transplant program at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore has been pairing donors for several years. In 2003, Tracy Stahl of Tire Hill received a kidney there as part of the world’s first “triple swap” transplant procedure.

Although dialysis can prolong a the life of a patient with kidney failure, it is far from a cure, Dr. Kusum Tom said after the press conference. She did not participate in the paired transplant operation, but said 50 percent of dialysis patients experience serious complications or die within five years.

“Every year a person is on dialysis their risk of dying increases,” Tom said.

Logistics is the biggest issue for paired donations, Gignac said. Bringing a donor and recipient from California together with a donor and recipient from New York, for instance, raises questions of who pays for transportation.

“You have to perform these operations all simultaneously,” Gignac said. “You don’t want to do one and have (the other donor) say, ‘Hey, look, I’ve changed my mind.’ ”

http://www.tribune-democrat.com/local/local_story_042234415.html