FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

National Kidney Registry Doubles KPD Matches

Announces Results of Major Software Enhancement

New York, NY – March 4, 2011. Today, the National Kidney Registry announced the results of a major upgrade to its matching system that is increasing the number of matches found for kidney transplant patients with incompatible donors. The software upgrade has extended the Registry’s matching capability from 2 deep loops and 12 deep chains to 20 deep loops and 20 deep chains. Early results indicate that this technology advance is not only finding more matches, but is finding more matches for the hardest to match patients, including another six antigen match found last month for a patient in the Registry that has a 99.9% PRA with 64 listed antibodies.

Since upgrading the matching software in December of 2010, over the past 90 days, the Registry has made 44 match offers involving 277 potential recipients. 9 of these match offers were loops and 35 of these match offers were chains. The loop offers involved 28 potential recipients and the chain offers involved 249 potential recipients. The two longest chain offers were 18 deep. During the past 90 days the Registry facilitated 45 successful transplants.

“This latest technology advancement required a near total rewrite of our core matching engine and pushes the computer processing limits of our state-of-the-art platform. It was a massive programming effort that builds on a foundation of over 15,000 development hours already invested in the platform, achieving the anticipated results”, said Rich Marta, Senior Software Engineer at the National Kidney Registry.

“As our capacity to find matches has expanded, we are now seeing an increase in the rate of match offer declines which has inspired another innovation, the Toolbox, which will allow member centers to “preview and pre-select” all potential donors that are biologically compatible to a potential recipient. This project is partially funded by a $175,000 HRSA grant and is already under development. It is expected to be rolled out in the next two months. It will increase the number of transplants by reducing the number of match offers that are ultimately declined”, reported Garet Hil, Founder & President of the National Kidney Registry.

About the National Kidney Registry

The National Kidney Registry has facilitated more paired exchange transplants than any other organization in the world. The National Kidney Registry is a nonprofit organization with the mission to save and improve the lives of people facing kidney failure by increasing the quality, speed, and number of living donor transplants in the world.  

Contact:

Tom Mollo

Executive Director
National Kidney Registry
1-800-936-1627

tm@kidneyregistry.org

www.kidneyregistry.org  begin_of_the_skype_highlighting          end_of_the_skype_highlightin

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