Chattanooga Family Benefits From ''Domino Transplant''

[Clark]

http://www.newschannel9.com/news/transplant-998445-woman-felt.html

Chattanooga Family Benefits From ''Domino Transplant''

After reading an article in her local paper about a woman desperately needing a kidney transplant, Diane Seale of Milton, Ga., felt compelled to help and called the Piedmont Hospital Transplant Institute, where the woman was a patient.

“If you are presented with an opportunity to save a person’s life, why not do everything you can to help?” Seale asks. “I was fortunate enough to have my good health, and here was this woman who has children just like me. I thought long and hard about it, and I knew I had to try.”

After testing, she discovered she was not a match for the woman’s rare antibody combination. However, Seale decided to donate a kidney anyway and volunteered as an unmatched donor.

Thanks to a matching process at Piedmont Transplant Institute called domino pairing, she essentially saved the lives of two strangers.

In paired donations, those who want to donate, but are not a match for their intended recipient, can swap recipients with another similarly incompatible pair. Paired donation programs help increase the probability of transplant patients finding compatible living donors.

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