Successful expansion of the living donor pool by alternative living donation programs

Between January 2000 and December 2007, 786 potential recipients and 1059 potential donors attended our pretransplant unit with the request for a living-donor renal transplant procedure. The recipients brought one potential donor in 77.2% and two or more donors in 22.8% of cases. In the regular living donor program, a compatible donor was found for 467 recipients. Without considering alternative donation, 579 donors would have been refused. Alternative living donation programs led to 114 compatible combinations: kidney-exchange program (35), ABO-incompatible donation (25), anonymous donation (37) and domino-paired anonymous donation (17). Together, the 114 alternative program donations and the 467 regular living donations led to 581 living donor transplantations (24.4% increase). Eventually for 54.9% (581/1059) of our donors, a compatible combination was found. Donor-recipient incompatibility comprised 19.4% (89/458) in the final refused population, which is 8.8% of the potential donor-recipient couples. Without considering alternative donation, 30.1% (174/579) of the refused donors would have been refused on incompatibility and 6.4% (37/579) because they were anonymous. This is 20% of the potential donor population (211/1059). The implementation of alternative living donation programs led to a significant increase in the number of transplantations, while transplantations via the direct donation program steadily increased.