Transplant Medicine

Overview

Listen as Mikel Prieto, M.D., surgical director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discusses kidney paired donation. Through kidney paired donation, patients are able to receive better matched kidneys. In kidney paired donation a patient receives a kidney from a living donor who they do not know. This living donor is a better match than the living donor who volunteered to donate for the patient. The living donor who was not a good match donates their kidney to another patient who they do not know. In an exchange, a living kidney donor and patient swaps kidneys with another donor and recipient pair.

A kidney paired donation chain starts with an altruistic donor, someone who wants to donate their kidney to a stranger. Kidney paired donation chains create opportunities for multiple patient-donor pairings. In addition to possibly reducing the amount of time a patient has to wait for a transplant, kidney paired donation enables patients to receive more compatible kidneys and gives donors the satisfaction of helping their loved ones and other transplant patients. Mayo Clinic is able to match donors and recipients from all three Mayo Clinic locations, in Rochester, Minnesota, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jacksonville, Florida.