First cross-province domino kidney transplant surgery successfully completed

The first cross-province domino kidney transplant surgeries involving Canadian Blood Services' Living Donor Paired Exchange (LDPE) registry were successfully completed on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 and were carried out by more than two dozen medical professionals at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, and Toronto General Hospital.

"The success of this domino procedure proves the effectiveness of the LDPE registry and highlights the benefits of operating a national system for organ and tissue donation and transplantation in Canada" says Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Graham Sher.

In all, eight Canadian patients took part in the domino surgery - four kidney donors and four kidney transplant recipients.

"This milestone not only means that four recipients received a transplant," says Dr. Sher. "It also means that four people have been removed from their local deceased donor kidney wait lists, and others who continue to wait on the list are one step closer to their own transplant".

The organ and tissue group at Canadian Blood Services will continue to develop the LDPE registry and are already working on new proposals for future transplants.

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Kidney: Living Donor Paired Exchange Registry (LDPE)

There are two types of kidney donation; deceased and living. Although deceased donation is the type most people are familiar with, it is also possible for a healthy living person to donate a kidney- living kidney donation. This involves a surgery to remove a kidney from the living donor and then to transplant it into a patient who needs a kidney - the recipient.

Kidney failure is also known as Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). An individual with CKD has three treatment possibilities: dialysis, a transplant from a deceased donor, or a transplant from a living donor. Transplantation is a preferred alternative to dialysis. Unfortunately, there are not enough deceased kidney donations to help everyone who needs a kidney transplant; many patients on the wait list will never receive one.

There are many advantages to live kidney donation. For example, a kidney from a living donor is usually healthier, may function better, and may last longer than a kidney from a deceased donor. It also helps to shorten the wait times for other CKD patients because the person receiving a living donor kidney is no longer on the waiting list.

Any adult who is in general good health can be assessed for living kidney donation. Blood tests will first determine whether the donor is a potential match for the recipient. If so, the donor and recipient are called a compatible pair. Additional tests will then make sure that both are medically able to undergo the surgeries. Only then can a transplant be approved. The donation and transplant surgeries are scheduled when both the donor and the recipient are in the best possible health.

If the blood tests indicate that the recipient and donor do not match, they are called an incompatible pair. This means that the donor's blood type is not compatible with the recipient's blood type or the recipient has proteins in his/her blood (known as antibodies) that will reject that donor's kidney. When this happens, if the pair is interested, additional medical tests can be done to see if they are healthy enough to participate in the Living Donor Paired Exchange (LDPE) Registry.

The LDPE Registry is a secure computer database. It contains medical information about incompatible donor-recipient pairs from across Canada. The Registry compares the medical information on all the pairs in the database and identifies pairs that might be able to exchange donors.

On February 12, 2009, Canadian Blood Services held a press conference to publicly launch the LDPE Registry.
Click here to read the News Release.