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Rare 9-way Kidney Swap a Success
Okian Warrior sends news that a complex set of 18 surgeries has been successfully completed at California Pacific Medical Center and the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center that resulted in nine donors sending kidneys to recipients in need. This web of kidney swaps arose because many of the people with failing kidneys had donors willing to help them, but weren't a biological match. Rather than give up on the transplant altogether, doctors were able to arrange the willing donors in a way such that each patient who needed a kidney was able to get one. "Software matching programs have been driving the trend. The programs use blood type and other patient data from medical tests to connect people who are compatible."
Part of the problem is the big shortage of organs. I'm not sure what to think about this, in that this sort of thing might decrease any purely voluntary no-strings-attached donations. Maybe we should just allow people to buy kidneys, instead of requiring this sort of complex web of conditional donation.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
But what is the connection to horse racing?
Like a wife swap. Just two of you, and it's quite possible the swap won't be fun because at least one pair doesn't hit it off. But bring 10 couples together and the chances of finding a way to pair everyone up so that they have a good time is a lot better.
You know. In theory.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
This made headlines because it's the longest cycle ever, but the people who run these programmes see long cycles as undesirable -- what they mostly do is identify hundreds of opportunities for two or three way swaps, or for "open" chains where one altruistic donor can result in two or three people getting kidneys. The maths behind it is quite interesting.
Their kind doesn't think we are entitled to keep our own kidneys so they beat us until we are unconscious and then they steal our kidneys. This is the legacy of the Bush Crime Family. Their kind has arranged it so that so many of us lose our kidneys. That is the way of their kind.
i'm hopeful that soon we will be replacing our organs with regrown versions of our own. they are making excellent progress in this field.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Any one intelligent knows this didn't happen. We are not stupid enough to believe this happened. Only a Republican is that stupid.
Look at all the humans, let's play mix and match, Frankenstein.
Steak and kidney pie.
Self-described libertarians can say some pretty stupid stuff sometimes, but this isn't one of them. If person to person monetary incentives are allowed (within certain guidelines), then there are more kidneys available period. Structured the right away, this could easily mean more kidneys and shorter waiting lists for poor people as well.
If the organs of most people dying would be available for transplantation, only a small fraction would be needed. A significant minority of people dies with perfectly fine kidneys.
I once heard about a traumatologist cynically referring to motor cyclists as 'future organ donors', for example.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
You really don't need the invisible hand of the market to fix everything. A much more sensible solution, for example, would be to find ways more people would agree to be organ donors after death.
For example, switching the default from opt-in to opt-out would make a significant difference in organ availability without actually forcing anyone to make a choice they're not comfortable with or could have an adverse influence on their health.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
Doctors especially older ones hate Electronic Health Records (EHR), they don't understand why they should use them, it takes longer to enter the data, they don't get any additional detail from the patient, it just seems a waste of time and money.
But the key advantage is when you can do analysts on the data, find matches and trends. Not on one patient but on a population. If I were willing to donate, it shouldn't be because one person needs it at that location it should be a wider search.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why do they transport some of the kidneys between hospitals instead of putting the donar and the recipient in the same hospital? It adds an additional risk factor for no benefit, as far as I can see.
A lot of the posters are missing the point here.
These are live donors who have joined a group of other live donors who made a promise to give a kidney now (while they are alive) in return for a kidney to be donated to a loved one in the near future (as the case may be). With the advent of national databases they were able to find a sequence of matches (involving 9 donors) so that they were able to get a kidney donated to their loved ones.
This is more a networking or graph design problem than a organ donation issue. I expect more of these sort of things in the future with other live donations (ie: liver, pancreas, bone marrow).
(I had a friend give a kidney to his twin brother. Wasn't a big deal. They just had to run a load of tests to make sure the healthy twin wasn't otherwise at risk for renal failure.)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
This reminded me of Dining Philiopher Problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
And you post seems to indicate the Philophers got Diabetes from eating too much.
While obesity is rampant it's not always a matter of bad habits. There are lots of reasons people have difficulty controlling their weight and it's not just self control around food.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Bartering organs? You know what the solution to the problems of barter is right? Money! But no, you would rather people die.
I think more people should look into this and other donations.. I've donated a kidney and am on the Bone Marrow Donor registry (http://bethematch.org/)
The three times I've cried in my life: Wedding day, birth of child, and walking to meet my kidney recipient after the operation.
I went through the Transplant Facility at MUSC (Medical University of South Carolina). The operations, while major, are somewhat common and straight forward. I never doubted anything would go wrong, and to be honest, I'd do it again... This is not to say that it wasn't painless. Day one, it felt like I was hit by a bus; day two felt like I was kit by a car; day three I don;t remember... (lots of morphine); day four I was home. It took about 8 weeks before I really felt like myself again. Well worth a summer vacation... You want to pick up chicks, drop the info that you donated a kidney....
I'm actually surprised that there isn't a Be The Match program for Kidney donations as there is for Bone Marrow. (Maybe there is and I am unaware--just did a google search... egads.)
Anyway, if you don;t want to donate while you're alive; sign up to do it afterward when you aren't using the organs any more.
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"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
We're doing 9 kidneys.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
9-way
As good and impressive as this is, in 2012, there was a "chain" of 60 people, 30 kidneys,
transplanted... It's quite amazing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02...
The object is useless without the installation procedure. You can't install it yourself so you have to get somebody to do it for you. They need to carry insurance in case they screw up and you sue them. There's no way money doesn't change hands here, but the object itself is not for sale.