OSU links long chain of kidney donations

OSU links long chain of kidney donations
Recipients' kin give organs to strangers in domino effect

Sunday, September 16, 2007 4:00 AM
By Simone Sebastian
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A single altruistic organ donation in Michigan has sparked a chain of giving that led to two simultaneous transplants at Ohio State University last week, creating what could be the longest string of transplants ever.

Relatives of kidney recipients have donated their own kidneys to strangers in a string of cross-country exchanges that landed recently in Columbus.

Ohio State University Medical Center doctors conducted four simultaneous surgeries Thursday to continue the chain.

"This is very novel," said Ohio State surgeon Ronald Pelletier, who conducted one of the surgeries. "We've developed this chain that hasn't been broken. Think of it as a domino effect."

The chain started in Michigan when a man donated his kidney to a woman in Phoenix he did not know. Her husband then gave his kidney to Angie Heckman of Toledo.

The chain came to Columbus when Heckman's mother, Laurie Sarvo, gave her own kidney to Dayton resident Cecilia Janisieski. Janisieski's daughter, Linda, then gave her kidney to Chillicothe resident George Leohner.

OSU surgeons conducted the Sarvo/Janisieski and Janisieski/Leohner transplants.

Leohner's sister is planning to continue the chain, too.

"We are perfect strangers who came together," said Angie Heckman of the donors and recipients who came before her. "We have a perfect relationship now. We're like a big family."

The exchanges were facilitated by Alliance for Paired Donation, an organization that links family members of organ-transplant recipients to those in need of a healthy kidney.

Mismatched blood types or biological problems can prevent someone from giving a kidney to a needy relative. So the alliance typically finds another donor/recipient pair with whom they can swap healthy organs.

But a chain as long as the one that has come to Ohio State -- with four recipients, four donors and counting -- is likely unprecedented, Pelletier said.

The need for such programs is growing, he said.

"We've had patients waiting for 10 years (for a kidney), and the average waiting time has been increasing over the last several years," he said.

Coordinating four simultaneous surgeries took a lot of resources and planning to make sure the right organ was taken out of the right body and went to the right recipient, Pelletier said.

Though giving a kidney to a stranger might not be as easy a choice as giving to a relative, the kidney donors who were recovering at Ohio State this weekend said the alliance's program made their decision easier.

"She knows that she's helping not just one stranger, she's helping a lot of people, because the chain keeps going," Heckman said of her mother.

After Linda Janisieski learned that neither she nor her four siblings could give an organ to their mother, she realized that the paired donation program was the quickest way to ensure her mother's health.

She signed up to give her organ away so her mother could get one from someone else.

"Whether I gave my kidney to a total stranger or not," Linda Janisieski said, "in my heart, she still got my kidney."

ssebastian@dispatch.com

"She's helping not just one stranger ... because the chain keeps going."

Angie Heckman
daughter of kidney donor

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/health/stories/2007/09/16/Kidney.ART_ART_09-16-07_B1_9R7TPLO.html?sid=101

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