How Cool is This?!?!?!

Health News 12 Patients Swap Kidneys at 3 Hospitals

(Feb. 19) - Doctors at three hospitals announced they have successfully completed the first six-way, 12-patient kidney transplant involving multiple centers — a feat that could dramatically increase the number of kidney transplants done each year.

“We have performed a six-way domino procedure at our hospital before. But this is the first time we have done something this ambitious on such a grand scale involving two other hospitals,” said Dr. Robert Montgomery, chief transplant surgeon at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

“This will serve as a blueprint for national match in which kidneys will be transported around the country resulting in an estimated 1,500 additional transplants each year,” he said.

The Feb. 14 procedure involved six donors, six organ recipients, and surgical teams at John Hopkins, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis and Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City. In all, nearly 100 medical professionals took part.

The procedure, known as kidney-paired donation or “domino swap,” takes a group of incompatible donor-recipient pairs and matches them with other pairs in need of a kidney that will match. By exchanging kidneys among the pairs, each recipient gets a suitable kidney.

All six donors, one man and five women, and six organ recipients, four men and two women, were in good condition, doctors said. As part of the complicated trade-off, Johns Hopkins flew one kidney to Integris Baptist, Integris Baptist flew one kidney to Barnes-Jewish and Barnes-Jewish flew one kidney to Johns Hopkins.

(Source: http://news.aol.com/health/article/kidney-domino-swap/351857)