Docs perform 6-way transplants

2008-04-09 12:02

Baltimore - Johns Hopkins surgeons transplanted a half-dozen kidneys simultaneously, an operation believed to be the first of its kind, hospital officials announced on Tuesday.

The 10-hour surgeries used six operating rooms and nine surgical teams.

"All 12 are doing great, the six kidneys are working well," said Dr Robert Montgomery, director of Hopkins' transplant centre and head of the transplant team.

The six-way transplant follows a quintuple transplant performed in 2006 at the hospital and several triple transplants. Last week, doctors at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed simultaneous transplants of four kidneys.

Most kidney transplants use organs taken from people who have died, but doctors prefer organs from live donors because the success rates are higher. The donors and recipients in the six-way transplant were matched using a living-donor system developed at Johns Hopkins.

Montgomery has advocated a wider system of connecting altruistic donors, transplant candidates and incompatible but willing donors to increase the number of available organs.

The United Network for Organ Sharing knows of no other six-way transplant, spokesperson Amanda Claggett said. She added that so-called paired donations are still very rare.

More than 252 000 kidney transplants have been performed in the United States since UNOS started keeping data in 1988; 87 000 of the kidneys came from living donors. There have been only 301 transplants performed through so-called paired kidney exchange, including 122 in 2007, Claggett said.

She said more than 75 000 people are waiting for kidney transplants and 4 352 died while waiting for a kidney last year.

- AP