Kidney paired donation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital

Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) has developed a single-center kidney paired donation (KPD) program that has resulted in 74 living donor kidney transplants in the 22 months since its inception. The NMH KPD program has increased access to transplantation among patients who are highly sensitized and has limited the amount of desensitization therapy used for incompatible recipients. Additionally, the incorporation of compatible pairs and non-directed donors into the KPD has allowed hard to match patients on the deceased donor waiting list the opportunity to receive living donor transplants. The number of donor-recipient pairs in the KPD pool has never exceeded forty and average time to transplant from entry into the KPD database until transplantation is less than four months. This demonstrates the capability of KPD to benefit challenging recipients and increase access to living donor transplantation in a timely manner. A multi-disciplinary approach is used to manage, review, and maintain the KPD database and resulting transplants.