Kidney-donor roster is expanded

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Kidney-donor roster is expanded

Patients are paired with willing donors - but not always who they expected

By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated:07/17/2007 07:55:33 AM MDT

LDS Hospital performed its first kidney transplant earlier this month under a new program aimed at increasing the number of living organ donors and improving transplant patients' survival rate.
    The Paired Donation Program - an effort of LDS Hospital's Intermountain Transplant Center, the University of Utah Transplant Center and Intermountain Donor Services - will allow kidney-failure patients who have willing but unsuitable donors to exchange kidneys.
    Candace Lindquist, one of the program's first participants, lived with the inevitability of a kidney transplant for nearly two decades. Her sister, Gigi Allred, was on stand-by to donate an organ come that day.
    Diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, the 50-year-old Lindquist had numerous fluid-filled cysts that were gradually replacing the mass of her organs and hampering their function. One kidney had already been removed. In February, the remaining one was taken out, leaving her with no other choice but to go on dialysis.
    Finally, Lindquist needed the transplant. But there was a glitch. The sisters, they discovered through tests, weren't a good match. Lindquist has Type B blood; Allred is a Type O.
    "I was really devastated," Allred, 53, said. "We had just kind of planned on this for 16 years."
    Without the new program, Lindquist's story would have ended like many others: she would have assumed a spot on a long wait list of people needing a healthy organ.
    Instead, she was able to quickly get the kidney she needed from a Good Samaritan donor, 23-year-old Brigham Young University student Kristen Bylund.
    The donor paired exchange transplant program works like this: A man needs a kidney transplant. His brother is willing to be the donor, but the two have mismatched blood or tissue types. Under LDS Hospital's program, the brother still donates his kidney, but to someone else who is a match.
    The man originally in need of a kidney, meanwhile, is bumped to the top of the hospital's wait list, making him eligible to receive the first available matching organ.
    Allred - who had intended to donate a kidney to Lindquist, her sister - instead gave it to a 23-year-old Tooele woman diagnosed with glomerulonephritis. The disease makes it difficult for the kidneys to remove waste and excess fluids.
    "To say it's a gift is a little bit of an understatement," said the woman, who felt noticeably better just a day after her transplant surgery earlier this month.
    Lindquist, meanwhile, received Good Samaritan Bylund's kidney after just five months on dialysis.
    LeGrand Belnap, a surgeon and director of LDS Hospital's transplant program, hopes the novel concept will close the widening gap between the number of kidneys available for transplant and the number of people in need of one.
    In Utah, 120 people are waiting for a kidney transplant. While about 65 percent of Utahns have registered to be organ donors - among the highest percentages in the country - the kidney shortage remains.
    In order for a person to be an organ donor at death, he or she has to die in a hospital on a ventilator. Though 6,000 people die each year in Utah, only 80 meet that criteria.
    One of the first hospitals in the Intermountain West to implement such exchange transplants, LDS Hospital is aiming to expand the pool of potential living donors and increase the quality of matches.
    Living-donor transplants, where the patient receives a kidney from a live person, provides better organ function than if that kidney were taken from a cadaver, Belnap said. The survival rate among those patients who receive living-donor transplants is about 15 percent higher.
    "It makes perfect sense," Belnap said Monday following a press conference at LDS Hospital. "It's something we should have done 10 years ago."
    lrosetta@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_6393433?IADID=Search-www.sltrib.com-www.sltrib.com

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 Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Donate a kidney to a stranger, save a relative    

Brooke Barker - Daily Herald   

How does it feel to not be able to donate a kidney to your own sister? Well, just ask GiGi Allred of Orem.

“I was devastated. It was something I’d planned on for 16 years,” said Allred. “I felt like I let my sister down.”

Earlier this year, Allred found out that she didn’t have the same blood type as Candace Lindquist, her sister, and a transplant would be impossible. But this story has a happy ending.

On July 3, Lindquist received a kidney and Allred was still able to donate -- just not to her sister. A new program at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City made it possible for Allred to give her kidney to a perfect match, Jennifer Morison, and in turn, move Lindquist to the top of the waiting list for her blood type. A kidney for her came via a Good Samaritan at the same time.

It's called a living-donor paired exchange transplant and has the ability to largely reduce the wait time for kidney patients and increase the number of living-donors, according to Dr. LeGrand Belnap, transplant surgeon and director of the transplant program at LDS Hospital.

The way it works is that a patient with kidney failure and a willing but unsuitable donor is paired with someone else in the same situation. Both patients get transplants and both donors are able to give a kidney to a better match. The donor could be a friend, relative or complete stranger.

"The potential is enormous," said Belnap, who estimated that living-donor transplants are about 15 percent more effective than deceased donors. The program will eventually link all of the transplant centers in neighboring states together, with willing family members or friends connected with those who are awaiting the perfect match.

Right now, Belnap said the need for kidneys is continuing to grow, and this recent surgery eliminated two of the nearly 72,000 holding out on waiting lists around the United States.

"We are just trying to do one more thing to make lives better for the people who need it," he said.

Although the program sounds simple, and LDS Hospital had considered it before, Belnap said they were reluctant to actually start it. It has only been used in several transplant centers around the country -- mostly in the East.

"We are one of the first in the West to do this, if not the first," he said.

The four surgeries happened in a matter of hours, with Allred going first and Lindquist finishing.

"It almost happened like clockwork," said Allred.

By the following morning, the recipient families noticed color in their faces and a forgotten energy.

"The next day I felt better than I had in years," said Morison. "It wasn't until after that I realized how always tired and run down I felt on dialysis."

She said that she will be forever grateful for Allred's donation, and is looking forward to one thing: Traveling. Dialysis kept her from backpacking across Europe, or exploring something on a whim, because she'd have to make definite plans to have dialysis on her journey.

"I told GiGi that I'd send her a postcard everywhere I went, saying, " 'Today I took your kidney here,' " she explained. "A gift is an understatement," said Morison. "It's my life."

The Good Samaritan -- Kristen Bylund, a BYU nursing student, chose to donate after being educated on organ donation.

"I just wanted to be able to help someone, and be able to have more empathy as a nurse for my patients," said Bylund.

The National Kidney Foundation of Utah and Idaho helps promote kidney education in middle schools and junior highs, and according to Sharon Miller, the organization's education coordinator, there are serious questions when it comes to kidney donation.

"People wonder 'will I be OK with one kidney?,' 'what happens if I lose my second kidney?'," Miller said, explaining that those who choose to donate will end up higher on waiting lists if their kidney fails later down the road.

She said the program has a potential to help kidney patients through Intermountain Donor Services, and people normally don't know much about kidneys unless there's been an issue in their family.

Brooke Barker is available at 344-2559 or bbarker@heraldextra.com.

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/228990/

PHOTO: ASHLEY FRANSCELL/Daily Herald Last week the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City performed a living-donor transplant between (left to right) Jennifer Morison, Candace Lindquist, Dr. LeGrand Belnap, GiGi Allred and Kristen Bylund. Morison received Allred's kidney and because of Allred's donation her sister Candance Lindquist moved up on the list and received a kidney from Bylund, a BYU student. On Monday, July 16, 2007 during a press conference the women posed for a picture.