African-American kidney patients get hope from new transplant idea

Aug 5, 2009, 22:20 GMT

Washington - A new way of preparing patients for kidney transplants may boost the number of African-Americans who can undergo the operation, a physician involved in a recent series of transports said Wednesday.

Doctors at two DC hospitals recently performed seven kidney transplants using a special blood-cleaning procedure to lower the patients' antibodies. The hospitals called it the largest multiple kidney transplant of its kind to take place in one city.

With fewer antibodies, a person can more easily accept a donor organ, broadening the pool of potential organ donors, doctors said.

This is particularly good news for African-Americans, who run a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and other conditions that can lead to kidney failure.

The prevalence of risk factors for kidney disease within the African-American community can make finding a donor extremely challenging, doctors say.

'Now, it's much easier for African-American people with kidney failure to get a transplant,' said Dr J Keith Melancon, Director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital, one of the participating hospitals.

The blood-cleansing procedure is called plasmapheresis, which has been around for decades. Using the procedure to facilitate transplants like this is relatively new idea, Dr Jimmy Light of Washington Hospital - the second hospital - told dpa.

Melancon said about 200-250 kidney transplants are done every year at all Washington area hospitals.

'Using plasmapheresis, we hope to double that number,' Melancon said.

Roughly 80,000 people are waiting for a kidney in the US, and about 36 per cent are African American. But African Americans only receive about 15 per cent of the living donor organs available, according to Washington Hospital Center in DC.

Eleven of the 14 participants were African-American, according to Washington Hospital, and some recipients had never met their donors before the operations.

The July procedures were 'domino transplants,' where mostly willing donor-recipient pairs who have incompatible tissue were matched with other pairs who had the same problem. At least two donors were called 'altruistic,' which indicates they may not have come into the operations as part of a 'pair' but rather as outside volunteers.

Domino transplants further broaden the pool of donors by creating a chain of transplants that allows the recipients to overcome the tissue-match problem and get organs they need.

The DC transplants were performed between July 16 and 21, and in some cases the kidneys were transported between the two hospitals to get from donor to recipient.

Donors and recipients gathered Wednesday at one of the hospitals to meet each other and celebrate.