http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=558544&in_page_id=1774DAILY MAIL UK
Kidney-go-round: Surgeons carry out SIX simultaneous transplants on mix-and-match patients By BARRY WIGMORE
Surgeons have performed the world's first "domino" operation involving six simultaneous kidney transplants.
Nine teams of medics spent ten hours carrying out the lifesaving procedures.
Five of the six recipients had found a friend or relative to donate a kidney which, although it did not match them, would match another of the six.
And when an anonymous living donor came forward, last weekend's operation could go ahead at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore.
The anonymous donor gave a compatible kidney to the first patient, allowing that patient's friend or relative to donate a kidney to the second patient - and so on, until all six patients had received a new kidney.
The procedures were carried out at the same time to ensure no one backed out after their loved one had received an organ.
Most transplants use organs taken from the dead but doctors prefer organs from live donors because the success rates are higher.
The Maryland hospital had devised a computerised tissue-matching service to bring compatible living donors and patients together.
It found that while not matching their own friend or relative, the tissue of the five prospective donors did match someone else in the group. Then they discovered on their database the anonymous "altruistic donor" - someone not related to a patient in need of a transplant.
The donor's tissue provided the sixth match and the marathon series of operations was arranged.
The set-up meant that the kidney from a donor would not go to that donor's friend or relative but the effect was the same in that all six patients needing a new kidney would get one.
One medic at the hospital said the procedure resembled "musical chairs as organs were carried from one operating room to another packed in sterile boxes".
Robert Montgomery, head of the transplant centre, said: "All 12 are doing great, the six transplanted kidneys are working well."
A colleague said: "Everybody might start with the best of intentions. But in this sort of multiple transplant, it is feasible that if some ops are done on a Monday and some Tuesday, by the time of another op on the Wednesday a donor whose relative or friend has already received a new kidney might decide he no longer wants to play his part and pulls out."
The donors and recipients came from thousands of miles apart, from North Carolina to California.
The pairs included two married couples, two friends, two cousins and a parent and child.
One of the recipients was Jeanne Heise from California, who had spent more than three years on the transplant waiting list.
Her husband, Randall Bolten, brother of President Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten, was one of the donors.
The six-way transplant follows a five-way switch at the hospital in 2006 and several triple transplants.
Last week, doctors at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed simultaneous transplants of four kidneys.
Experts say Britain, which has one of the lowest kidney transplant rates in Western Europe, could benefit from the domino approach.
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