Editorial: Kidney exchange blends generosity, medical ingenuity

[Clark]

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/nov/29/editorial-kidney-exchange-blends-generosity/

Editorial: Kidney exchange blends generosity, medical ingenuity

Of all the gestures that demonstrate true friendship, offering up a life-saving kidney — as Redding business owner John Williams did for restaurateur Jim Gironda — is as noble as they come.

As profound as that gift is, though, without a medical match it's just a warm sentiment. Encouraging? Sure. But no more effective than a get-well card.

At least, that was the case until last year.

But through a remarkable program known as kidney paired donation, Williams saved a life and Redding diners will continue to enjoy Gironda's secret sauce. They and two other donor-recipient pairs were part of an elaborate six-person kidney swap performed earlier this month at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Each donor gave a kidney — just not to his or her friend, at least directly. Instead, they were matched to viable recipients in need of a kidney through medical databases.

More than 90,000 Americans are on waiting lists for a kidney transplant. Not all have a loved one willing to give up a kidney — though doctors say most of us, if healthy, can get by with only one of the two we're born with. Enough do, however, that the doctors who set up the paired kidney donation pilot project — which the federal Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network launched nationally last year — estimate as many as 3,000 new kidney transplants could result from comprehensive "matchmaking."

That's as many as 3,000 lives saved from the burden of long dialysis treatments that, typically, only delay an early death from kidney failure.

For all the daunting cost of modern medical care, its accomplishments can verge on the miraculous. In this case, it transformed three acts of amazing generosity that could not be accepted into three second chances at life, including Gironda's.

And if that one-two punch of brotherly love and 21st-century ingenuity doesn't give you hope, you might need a heart transplant.