News Summary

An anonymous kidney donor began a sequence of ten surgeries, resulting in five people in two states receiving kidney transplants. The surgery chain, led by University of Minnesota Physician transplant surgeons and commonly known as a "domino donation," began and ended at the University of Minnesota.

Full Text

What began with an anonymous kidney donor expanded into a sequence of ten surgeries, resulting in five people in two states receiving kidney transplants. The surgery chain, led by University of Minnesota Physician transplant surgeons and commonly known as a “domino donation,” began and ended at the University of Minnesota.

The success of the procedures has University of Minnesota Medical School researchers hopeful that this unique donation chain can become a more common scenario in the future; potentially helping the more than 80,000 people who are currently waiting to receive a donation.

“In a sense, it’s really a ‘pay it forward’ system,” said University of Minnesota Physician Raja Kandaswamy, M.D., a transplant surgeon involved in the surgical sequence.  “This is somewhat new, the whole concept of this domino effect, and it is still very much in its infancy.  We at the University of Minnesota hope to continue working on it, formalize it, and have it developed further.”

In addition to four surgical procedures at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview, in Minneapolis, the transplant chain included two surgeries at Sanford Health in Fargo and four at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Transplant surgeons say all donors and recipients are recovering and doing well.

How the Domino Donations Happened

This rare chain of surgeries was made possible by unique programs at each of the transplant centers. Non-directed donor programs allow individuals who meet strict criteria to donate a kidney, anonymously, to the most compatible recipient on the waiting list. Conversely, paired exchange kidney donation programs allow a potential recipient with a willing but incompatible donor to be placed in a “pool” with other incompatible donors and potential recipients. The end result is that the donor agrees to give a kidney if a match is found for his or her partner.

In this case, a non-directed donor in Minneapolis was a match for a potential recipient in Fargo who was in the paired exchange pool. The Minneapolis kidney was flown to Fargo. Two surgeries later, a kidney from Fargo was driven to Minneapolis, extending the chain with four more transplants at Abbott Northwestern Hospital and University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview. In total, ten people produced five successful kidney transplants.

Non-directed donation is anonymous. For that reason, the patients involved in these transplants are not identified and not available for interviews at this time.

However, the donor who kicked off the chain provided this statement:

“In doing the research on kidney donation (for a family member that it was too late for), I realized that nothing that I was reading made me not want to do it. In fact, I was completely blown away by how many people were waiting, the ease of the surgery, and our ability to live a completely normal life with one kidney. I knew then that I had to donate to anyone who needed it. The paired exchange program was the most amazing bonus in the whole thing, that more than one person might benefit from my decision to help someone else in this way.”