Living Donors Online Message Board
Living Donation Discussion and News => Living Donation Forum => Topic started by: syranope on October 25, 2018, 11:54:09 PM
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Hi all - this is my first time on this forum so please forgive me if this is posted in the wrong place.
My father has PSC and will never have a MELD score high enough to qualify for a deceased donor, so his only option is a living donor. We have gone through most of our options and I am the only one who would really be a decent donor and I'm willing, but my blood type is A+ and he is O+.
Do any of you know of any programs or any way to look into a paired donor, where I would donate to someone else and their donor would donate to my dad? We are running out of options and his quality of life is really suffering. It's very frustrating to watch and not be able to help.
Thanks for any info you can give.
Carey
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Carey, my understanding is there are no formal paired exchange programs in the US for living liver donation. There have been experiments with it in Asia (Korea is an example).
That said, there's nothing stopping you from finding a donor/recipient pair that would work for you, or simply someone with type O willing to be a directed donor to your father. Back in the day, before the formal paired exchange programs for kidney programs, that's what people had to do. So the idea is to get the word out. Here's an LDO web page with suggestions for finding a living donor.
https://livingdonorsonline.org/finding-living-donor/
Best of luck!
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Hi I am sorry, I responded too quickly and thought you were asking about kidney donations. However, I still think the hospitals would be the best source of information since they are also the ones who participate in and run the paired kidney donations. I would check out the big hospital names in the major cities. Best wishes.