In the News

Jackie Sitkowski donated one of her kidneys to a woman in Georgia so that Jay Matuska could receive a healthy kidney from the woman’s son in exchange. The newlyweds learned on the night of their rehearsal dinner that a match had been found for a paired kidney exchange.  …

In yoga class, Kathy Hart heard about a 7-year-old boy who needed a kidney. She thought of her brother, who died young from a rare disease, and decided to donate a kidney to the boy—or anyone.

I would like to thank someone whose name I will never know but to whom I will be forever indebted. The mother of my son’s daughter gave one of her kidneys to an anonymous recipient at the UCLA Medical Center. When her kidney arrived in California, the surgeons there phoned a surgical team in Madison …

Before surgeons stitched a kidney from a 32-year-old former Marine into his abdomen in March, Mark Kim spent almost two years on dialysis. He found himself mulling over how odd it was that a new kidney—the one thing he needed most—was something money couldn’t buy.

Two days before Denna Harris was scheduled to donate her kidney to her cousin, Chelsea Hodges, the final cross-match test revealed that Hodges’ body would likely reject the organ. Harris was devastated, but that didn’t stop her commitment to give. In March, the National Kidney Registry completed its largest ever multi-center kidney swap, transplanting 34 …

With donations from cadavers unable to meet demand for organs, a 68-person kidney chain is the kind of approach urgently needed to counter a growing transplant waiting list. In what was described as the nation’s largest exchange to date, 34 people donated kidneys and 34 received them over a two-month period.

We’re about to take you inside the operating room to witness history in the making. A chain of complete strangers making incredible sacrifices to give the gift of life. Nightline co-anchor Byron Pitts has the story. What you’re witnessing is months in the making. Because this kidney is only one part of a transplant chain …

Donating a kidney was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. I did it because I could. It was that simple. The question for me was never “why would I?” but “why wouldn’t I?” …

For most of her life, Mitzi Neyens’ kidney disease was manageable, until suddenly, it wasn’t. Mitzi, 77, was in otherwise good health, but because of her age, she wasn’t eligible for a kidney from a deceased donor. Her only option was to find a living donor. So the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison enrolled …

The National Kidney Registry does something called the paired exchange program. The most recent exchange involves 70 people from across the country, including two people from Pennsylvania that had their operations done at Pinnacle Health Harrisburg Hospital.