Kidney exchange gives new hope for transplant patients

Maria Polli finally received a kidney and pancreas transplant in 2006 after waiting for five years.

The combination of diabetes and back-to-back pregnancies with her two sons had put too much pressure on her system, but Polli had thought the new transplants would be able to fix those problems.

Complications with the surgery, however, claimed the new kidney, and the Dallastown resident was looking at five more years until she received another kidney transplant.

However, a new program caught Polli’s attention.

“I had actually seen something on PBS about a paired kidney transplant program, and my husband checked into it right away,” she said. “We got in touch with Dr. (Harold) Yang who had done the previous transplant for me, and they worked on getting me a transplant.”

That was 18 months ago.

And on Oct. 8, Polli was released from PinnacleHealth hospital with a new kidney in working order.

“I feel wonderful — other than just recovering from surgery,” she laughed. “We’re anxious to get our lives back.”

Biggest exchange

Polli’s transplant was part of the biggest kidney exchange transplant surgery chain in America, which involved eight pairings of donors and recipients coast-to-coast. PinnacleHealth is the first hospital to sign up in Central Pennsylvania, and the exchange itself boasts many firsts of its own.

It was the largest swap occurring over a one-week period — from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6 — with 16 surgeries at five hospitals across the nation. The exchange had the first red eye flight used for a transcontinental shipped kidney, first compatible pair in a National Kidney Register swap and the oldest recipient in an NKR swap at 83 years old.

The exchange functions by pairing a person who needs a kidney with one who can give one away.

When Polli received her kidney from a donor at Cornell Medical Center in upstate New York, someone at Cornell received a kidney from the University of California in San Francisco Medical Center. And for Polli to get her kidney, someone she knew had to give up one of theirs.

Her husband John Polli was up for the task.

“He didn’t give it a second thought,” Maria Polli said. “He’s quite a husband. Whatever it took to make this better for us, he’d do it, even if that meant giving a kidney.”

John Polli gave up his kidney first in the exchange, and it was flown to a recipient at UCLA Medical Center in California. It wasn’t long after before Maria Polli received hers.

Implications

The exchange’s paired transplant idea is an important one for Dr. Yang, who performs kidney and pancreas transplants at PinnacleHealth.

“It gives people a transplant sooner,” Yang said. “They don’t have to spend time waiting. Depending on the blood type, a person can wait close to five years. People who have a living donor may not have the same blood type or tissue composition to get a transplant. People can obviously get worse when waiting, and there could be complications with dialysis.”

With the program, however, the wait mirrors Polli’s experience of an 18-month wait instead of a five-year wait.

The exchange is part of the National Kidney Registry that opens up the number of compatible donors a person is able to find. It also allows for coast-to-coast transplants, which allows for an even larger number of opportunities for those in need of a kidney.

It’s the kind of program that PinnacleHealth and Yang intend on continuing.

“It worked out beautifully,” Yang said. “Our kidney worked perfectly for them, and theirs worked perfectly for us. We plan on offering this to a lot more patients.”

For more information about the exchange, go to the National Kidney Registry’s Web site at www.kidneyregistry.org.