LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - It might sound like something you would see on the television show "ER", but surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital are hoping it is the wave of the future- a 6-way multi-center transplant. Dr. Robert Montgomery of Johns Hopkins orchestrated this complex swap involving 12-patients at three different hospitals. Dr. Montgomery says, "Essentially what we do is mix and match and find an organ from a pool of people who have that problem. It's just like a line of dominos. If they don't all tumble, the ones at the end are left standing."
Dr. Montgomery found five pairs of people, each consisting of someone in need of a kidney and a relative who wanted to donate, but was incompatible. Then, Montgomery realigned the pairs to find a match for four of the recipients. A stranger donated a fifth kidney and a sixth recipient was chosen from the national waiting list. That makes 12-patients in all and all were linked from one to the next, with the surgeries timed precisely because three of the kidneys were flown across the country.
It was a Valentine's Day swap, but the news was only released Wednesday and all of the patients are healing well. Now, Johns Hopkins officials say that if more hospitals would orchestrate these multi-patient procedures, an additional 1500-transplants could be performed every year.