● It is unknown how Kidney Swap participants may cope emotionally following the surgery. A recipient could be happy to have received a kidney, but not necessarily want to be best friends with the donor, and the donor may want to keep in touch to see how his kidney is faring.
● Typically patients and donors do not meet prior to surgery, and the pairs of patients are kept anonymous from each other. When admitted to the hospital they are assigned to different nursing units and pre and post-operative areas and returned to separate nursing units after the surgery. Patients' families also wait in different areas. This is primarily done for two reasons:
- If someone decides to back out at the last minute, hospitals do not want the other family harassing them or trying to pressure them into donating.
- If donors and recipients do not get along, a pre-operation meeting could ruin the swap. Patients are usually given the option of meeting afterwards. If all four parties agree, which is often the case, they meet.
● The operations are conducted simultaneously to prevent a donor from reneging once their loved one receives their kidney donation. That means all four patients must be operated on simultaneously. This requires four hospital rooms, surgical teams, anesthesiologists, etc., which must be coordinated flawlessly. This is significant because not all hospitals have 4 transplant teams available at the same time. Two hospitals that have the manpower and resources to do this are The New York-Presbyterian/Columbia and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
● Each operation is typically paced, in case surgeons find an unanticipated problem with a recipient that prevents them from continuing, the donor operation would stop as well and vice versa. However, the other two operations may continue, so donors are typically warned of a small chance that they could donate a kidney without their friend or family member receiving one.
● There are approximately 150 tissue types, so there is no guarantee that a compatible donor will be found. The likelihood that a donor will be found will depend on recipient needs and donor availability.
For more information regarding kidney transplants please visit the USC Kidney Transplant Program’s online publication of the Kidney Donation Process: A Patient’s Guide to Kidney Transplant Surgery .
