In what looks like a medical first, doctors reported Wednesday that a kidney transplanted into one patient, which then started to fail, was successfully removed and transplanted into a second patient, who is doing well.
Lorenzo Gallon supervised the transplants over a two-week span in June at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, says the report in The New England Journal of Medicine.
While transplanted kidneys have been removed from deceased recipients and given to someone else, this is the first time in the U.S. a living recipient has passed along a donated kidney, says Joel Newman with the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).
Since the surgery, Gallon determined that although the kidney was once diseased, it is now healthy in the second patient. Never before, Gallon said, has a disease affecting a kidney in one patient been reversed in another recipient.
"Normally, when a transplant isn't successful, we have to take it out and discard it because it is doing more damage than good," said Gallon, medical director of the hospital's kidney transplant program.
The kidney belonged to Cera Fearing, 21, of Elk Grove, Ill. She first donated the organ June 16 to her brother Ray Fearing, 27, who suffers from one of the most common kinds of kidney disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. It forms scar tissue in the part of the kidney that filters out waste and ultimately causes kidney failure. In patients with FSGS, disease recurrence is about 50% after a transplant.
Gallon informed Fearing that it was a life-threatening condition for him, but that the kidney could probably be reused for someone else. Gallon performed the second transplant June 30.
"Giving it to someone else seemed like the right thing to do," said Ray Fearing, who undergoes dialysis several times a week and is not currently a candidate for another kidney. "This was a gift to me, and I wanted to pass along the gift. "
Erwin Gomez, 67, of Valparaiso, Ind., the second recipient, is a surgeon and father of five, and he is thriving. "I consider myself blessed," said Gomez, a diabetic who was in end-stage kidney failure.
Cera Fearing knew her donation "wasn't a sure thing for Ray, but I am happy the kidney could help someone."
Gallon said Gomez looks good: "It's almost like when you put water into a flower that hasn't seen water for a month."
Most transplanted organs, about 80%, are kidneys, said Jill Finnie of UNOS. About 92,000 patients are on the wait list for kidneys. "So many people are in need,'' she says. "Finding ways to reuse kidneys is important."
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