Local transplant recipient has a second lease on life

Local transplant recipient has a second lease on life

By Lewis Rutherfurd--[ lewis@hmbreview.com ]
Oct 25, 2007

Patrick Barron had been waiting for a miracle for three years - and he didn't think he'd get one.

The Half Moon Bay resident and father of two was shackled to a dialysis machine with a degenerative disease that had swelled his kidneys horribly. The future looked grim.

It took a complex and emotional organ swap that spanned the entire country to change the script for Barron. The kidney transfer, between family donors whose organs weren't compatible, and matching recipients in other desperate clans across the country is part of a growing trend of such maneuvers. The process - and Barron's case - received national attention in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.

"I went into this thing without hope," said Barron. "I was looking at another three years of dialysis, and in the United States our mortality rate of people on dialysis is really high."

The three-way organ transfer was a complex and emotional negotiation between spouses, crack surgeons across the country and sometimes conflicted recipients. It was arranged with chartered jets, police escorts and split-second timing, according to the Journal's report.

The simultaneous surgeries went without a hitch on April 27 at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Barron received a kidney from a recent Korean immigrant whose sick wife had a different blood type and couldn't accept his own. Barron's wife donated her kidney to an African-American woman from Baltimore, with whom she had been found to be a rare match. The woman's husband donated his kidney to the Korean woman.

Almost six months later, Barron said they were all doing well.

"I was out of the hospital in five days; my wife was out in three days," said Barron. He took three weeks to recover and his wife took six. Donors always take longer, he added.

The other families are in good shape too.

"The kidney function in every case is excellent," said Steve Katznelson, medical director of the CPMC kidney transplant program. Katznelson noted that such swaps, now referred to formally as kidney paired donations, are on the rise and that CPMC is fast becoming a world leader in the practice. Special software written by a former kidney patient runs the complex matching process for the center. Katznelson runs the program several times a week on his laptop and has several transplants scheduled in the coming weeks.

Barron is not back to 100 percent yet. His old kidneys are still there; they cause painful swelling at times and limit his activity. And powerful medications will always be a part of his life.

"It's kind of a multi-step process," Katznelson said. "Anti-rejection drugs are a lifetime commitment." The mortality rate for dialysis patients, a process in which a machine takes over kidney function, is grim, he added. "Almost one in five people on dialysis don't survive until the next year."

Despite any continued challenges, Barron is thrilled to be done with the process.

"You feel normal again," Barron said. "For me, it was a miracle."

Barron's two children went to the Wilkinson School and are now both in college. He hopes to return soon to his work at Ariba, a software company in Mountain View, and have his "native kidneys" removed next year so he can ski again. But the growing trend of such family swaps offers a new tool in the difficult and crowded world of organ transplant lists and lengthy waits, and Barron is glad to have played a role in raising awareness.

"It's actually huge," said Barron, who recently returned from a conference of the American Association of Kidney Patients. "I know the number of people involved in these exchanges has grown.

"When I saw the (Wall Street Journal) article, I could see that I'm somewhat of a guinea pig and I made the story more interesting." The important message, he said, is that more people can be helped through such swaps.

"When I had my operation, only the (University of California, San Francisco) Medical Center and the California Pacific Medical Center were doing these, and now Stanford offers it too," Barron said, adding that people interested in the programs should contact the hospitals directly.

While paired donation is bound to be a boon for many struggling patients, the practice is not all Barron had going for him.

"He's a pretty special transplant recipient," said Katznelson, describing Barron's well-informed exchanges with medical staff and his attention to detail. "He's very on top of his health care and is a very intelligent guy."

http://hmbreview.com/articles/2007/10/25/news/local_news/story07.txt