'Paired donation' may contribute to more kidney matches

A living kidney "paired donation" (KPD) appears to be a successful means of efficiently finding more kidney donors who are a match for patients in need, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers in Baltimore. KPD is a process in which living incompatible donor-recipient pairs are matched with other living incompatible donor-recipient pairs in order to find successful matches.

In the study, surgeons report successfully performing KPD transplants on 21 of 22 patients. The results could pave the way to a national matching registry that would enable hundreds who cannot receive a kidney from a loved one to be transplanted by exchanging donors with a stranger.

"This study shows that KPD can be done with high degree of success and should be adopted widely with the help of a national KPD list," said lead researcher Robert Montgomery, MD, PhD. "If you increase the pool of donor-recipient pairs, you increase the number of possible matches."