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Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004 - 12:58 A.M.

Just read this and had to share it with everyone, isn't it terrific ? Living Kidney Donor Registry


Four Transplants Done Under Living Kidney Donor Registry

November 15, 2004, 8:39 PM

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Four patients have received transplants in the past two weeks in a statewide program that uses a computer database to arrange kidney swaps for patient-donor pairs who don't match each other but fit with another pair, doctors said.

Michigan and Indiana are interested in joining Ohio's registry, which would more than double the eight hospitals now participating, said Dr. E. Steve Woodle, a surgeon and transplant program director at the University of Cincinnati.

About 20 patients have been enrolled in the last three months after several months of computer testing and getting transplant programs signed up, Woodle said. The Ohio Health Department announced the program one year ago.

Ron Lazar, 57, of North Canton, was getting his new kidney at the Cleveland Clinic last Tuesday at the same moment his wife, Kathy, 54, was donating hers at Akron City Hospital. After years of four-hour dialysis three times a week, his new kidney worked within 10 minutes.

The registry will help many families, he said.

"There are plenty of husbands and wives and brothers and sisters who want to give a kidney. They just don't match," Lazar said.

Each patient can have several willing donors entered in the registry to increase the chances of a match, Woodle said.

The operations are done simultaneously so the kidneys spend less time outside of a body. The other swap was done at Medical College of Ohio in Toledo.

Similar registries operate in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and among six New England states, but Ohio's is the first sponsored by a state health department, said Annie Moore, spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Ohio's program used a grant and $6,000 donations from the hospitals to develop a computer program that assigns points for blood and tissue type; patient size, age and health; and other factors that go into a match, Woodle said.

The goal is to distribute the software with a package of booklets and other materials so other regions can inexpensively start their own organ-swapping network and someday take it nationwide, he said.

"We'll all be looking at Ohio," said Cindy Speas, spokeswoman for the Washington Regional Voluntary Living Donor Program. That program has an exchange program but has not done any pair swaps. Its transplants include 10 from altruistic donors who signed up even though they knew no one who needed a kidney and matched someone on the list.

That program and New England's also arrange exchanges in which a person needing a kidney moves up to the top of the waiting list if a loved one donates a kidney to another person on the list.

But the original person will receive a kidney from a brain-dead organ donor. United Network statistics show patients who receive such kidneys have a lower survival rate than ones who have a living donor. Doctors don't know why, Woodle said.

As of Monday, 1,867 Ohioans are awaiting a kidney.

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On the Net:

www.lifelineofohio.org

www.unos.org

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