The demand certainly is there. Kidneys are, by far, the most in-demand organ—as of Dec. 26, 109,789 people were on the national waiting list. And on Dec. 4, a change to the way kidneys are allocated went into effect. Instead of pulling matches from the list solely on a first-come, first-served basis, the United Network for Organ Sharing (1) system now uses longevity matching (2) for its kidney recipients. It could be a huge boon for younger people seeking a kidney.
“I’m nearly 68; if I was the next person up on the waiting list for a kidney and we had a 20-year-old donor, I would get that kidney. Yet two people below me sits [another] 20-year-old. Who’s gonna live longer with that 20-year-old kidney?” said Doug Penrod, registered nurse and outreach coordinator for Northwestern Medicine’s Comprehensive Transplant Center, explaining the flaw addressed by the change. “Since the amount of organs hasn’t really significantly increased, but the demand has hugely increased, we needed to do a better job with what we have.”
Penrod himself is a kidney donor, having participated in a four-way domino paired exchange (3) in 2008. No, he didn’t have a prior friendship with the woman he donated to, and no, they don’t really keep up these days.
“I had no idea who I donated to until the next day,” he said. “And that in some ways may have made it somewhat easier emotionally to do this whole thing and then not have concerns about, well, is she taking care of my kidney OK? Is she treating it good? Or me worrying about, oh God, did I give her a good enough kidney?”