BALTIMORE, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- U.S. surgeons have successfully completed the first five-way donor kidney swap among 10 individuals.
All five organ recipients -- three men and two women -- were reported doing well Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, as were the five female donors.
The 10-hour surgeries began at 7 a.m. Nov. 14, occupied six operating rooms staffed by 12 surgeons, 11 anesthesiologists and 18 nurses, officials said Monday.
Four transplant candidates had gone to Johns Hopkins separately for evaluation, each with a willing donor whose blood and tissue types were incompatible with the intended recipient and who, therefore, could not donate to their loved one.
Using a living donor matching system, the Hopkins team included a so-called altruistic donor in the mix and were able to arrange a five-way swap, in which all four original candidates received compatible kidneys from someone they had never met, and the remaining kidney went to a patient who was next on the United Network for Organ Sharing organ recipient list.
The "altruistic" donor, Honore Rothstein, a healthy 48-year-old computer programmer, said she was motivated to donate a kidney after separately losing her husband and daughter.
