Six Kidney Exchange

Following up on a previous post on kidney exchanges and operations research (which becomes a pun in this context!), Johns Hopkins Hospital has just done a six-way kidney exchange.  Interestingly, this was not done done totally with friends and relatives:

The procedure was made possible after an altruistic donor – neither a friend nor relative of any of the six patients – was found to match one of them.

I would think that knowing the effect on six  needy recipients was a great incentive for the altruistic donor.

Thanks to Mark in Auckland for the pointer!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *