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Two San Francisco hospitals performed a successful number of 18 surgeries in a two-day kidney transplant chain on Friday.
The University of California-San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF) and the California Pacific Medical Center medical teams were the stars of a painstaking 36 hours long kidney transplant chain on Friday.
A number of 18 surgeries in total were conducted throughout Thursday and Friday, with 10 on Thursday and another 8 on the following day. The amazing race is considered the longest transplant chain ever performed in just one city over a period of time of 36 hours.
The chain involved nine donors and nine recipients, as well as four total trips from the UCSF to California Pacific and back. On Thursday, two kidneys were sent from UCSF to California Pacific, while on Friday, another two were sent from California Pacific to UCSF.
Noel Sanchez, the official spokesman for Donor Network West, the medical transport company based in Oakland, commented for the press that:
“Everything went as planned and our team is just getting to transport the very last one”.
The chain of kidney transplants on Thursday and Friday comes as great news for both the medical community and patients on waiting lists nationwide. The transplants were made possible by a program that was initially developed by a former patient at California Pacific and it seems it yields great results.
What the software does is to pool patient data and match people show high compatibility. It increases the workflow and chances of potential donors being immediately matched to people who present a high level of compatibility, thus cutting off quite some numbers from waiting lists.
Of course, there is the safeguard for families that in case they might need a kidney as well, a suitable donor will be found rapidly.
The factors that are weighted in by the software are age, blood type, as well as other medical parameters that are vital for the success of a kidney transplant.
What a kidney transplant chain entails in the beginning is that one donor altruistically gives his kidney and others follow in. In the case of the two San Francisco based hospital, this altruistic donor was Reid Moran-Haywood. The 56-year old man stated before his surgery that:
“It’s really exciting I can do something like this and help someone out in my own lifetime”.
His selfless gesture saved the lives of many who were suffering of renal failure and had been long waiting for the opportunity.
Both the surgeon team at the UCSF and that at the California Pacific Medical Center are highly pleased with the results. The sheer will of people to do good and the software that made it possible, as well as the medical skill necessary to perform such an extenuating chain of surgeries were praised by the media and medical boards.
Previously, the longest chain of the kind involved 68 surgeries for a staggering 34 transplants in 26 hospital across the U.S. The chain was successfully completed after a three month period.
Image Source: inquisitr.com
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