Kidney swap brings Brevard woman hope

OrlandoSentinel.com

Kidney swap brings Brevard woman hope

Robyn Shelton
Sentinel Medical Writer

December 8, 2007

Ethel Devine wanted to give her ailing mother a kidney.

But the two are not compatible, so Devine did the next-best thing. She promised to donate her organ to a stranger, provided her mother got a kidney in return.

The swap partly was carried out Friday in operating rooms 1,000 miles apart in Orlando and Ohio. Devine's mother, Shirley Kopinski of Titusville, received a kidney from Ohio resident Melissa Miller. The two had their surgeries at Florida Hospital Orlando.

At the same time, Miller's mother was receiving a kidney in Columbus, Ohio.

As part of the deal, Devine was in Toledo, expecting to donate her kidney to a recipient there. But final testing revealed they were not suited after all, so the transplant was canceled.

The complex organ exchange was the first of its kind for Florida Hospital, where about 140 kidney transplants are done annually. But doctors expect more people -- desperate to help loved ones -- to get involved in similar swaps.

The Titusville mother of two pledges to keep her end of the bargain.

"I wanted to give my kidney to my mother," said Devine, 36, "and even though it's not going into her body, I still feel it's a gift to her."

Doctors in Toledo were searching Friday for a new patient to receive Devine's kidney. If a suitable candidate is found, she could have surgery as early as Monday.

In Florida, Devine's mother and her donor were reported in good condition Friday evening at Florida Hospital.

Their operations were performed in side-by-side operating rooms. Transplant surgeon Tom Chin removed Miller's kidney through small incisions in a "laparoscopic" procedure.

He then handed the organ to Dr. Bobby Nibhanupudy, who implanted it in Kopinski. The mother of six, grandmother of 13 and great-grandmother of two is not new to the operation.

She had a transplant previously, but her body eventually rejected the organ. Devine said her mother has been on dialysis for the past year. Doctors don't know why she suffers from kidney failure, which affects millions of Americans.

Nibhanupudy said there are no guarantees, but Kopinski's chance of success is buoyed by the fact that she had a previous transplant that worked for several years.

"Based on my experience, I expect her to do very well," he said.

Nearly 74,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Most wait one to five years for an organ. Nibhanupudy said people could get transplants more quickly if a loved one is willing to donate.

Doctors refer to these mix-and-match transplants as "paired donations." Here's how it works: A recipient and donor who are not compatible are entered into a national database. They are matched with others in the same situation, where a donor is willing to part with a kidney but is incompatible with his or her loved one.

Nibhanupudy said the organ swap creates more opportunities.

"It's a great idea and certainly affords more patients the benefit of a living-donor transplant," he said.

For Devine, the donation is an act of love. She described her mother as "the most beautiful, compassionate, wonderful woman."

She is not concerned about her own surgery -- whenever it may be.

"I would do anything for my mother," she said. "This is easy because I'm doing it for her."

Robyn Shelton can be reached at rshelton@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5487.

orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-transplant0807dec08,0,7719740.story