Detroit (WWJ) -- Organ donations need to be a match, and that can sometimes mean sharpening up organizational skills as well as scalpels. Doctors at Henry Ford Hospital are helping patients do just that to find the right kidney for them.
Domino donor kidney transplant takes a group of incompatible donor-recipient pairs and matches them with other pairs in a similar predicament, thus increasing the pool of living-donor kidneys and enabling patients on the transplant waiting list to get transplanted sooner.
Henry Ford Hospital is the first in Michigan to participate in a domino donor kidney transplant in which eight patients received a new kidney from eight unrelated donors at four hospitals in four states. These surgeries are believed to be the largest series of kidney paired donation procedures ever undertaken.
Surgeries were performed on four separate days at Henry Ford, The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis as donated kidneys were transported by airplane to their intended recipients under a Kidney Paired Donation.
Lauren Malinzak, M.D., a Henry Ford transplant surgeon involved in the domino donation surgery, says the paired kidney donation is an opportunity for Henry Ford to expand the reach for donated organs and to save lives.
"As the number of people on a transplant waiting list continues to outnumber available organs, we need to look for innovative ways to help our patients," Dr. Malinzak says.
In Michigan, more than 2,400 people are waiting for a kidney transplant, according to the Gift of Life Michigan. Henry Ford, one of only two multi-organ transplant centers in Michigan, performed the first kidney transplant in Detroit in 1968. Through June, Henry Ford has performed 2,320 kidney transplants.
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