30 Kidneys, All Linked in a Record Chain of Transplants
As a dawn chill broke over Chicago on Dec. 20, Mr. Terry received a plump pink kidney in a transplant at Loyola University Medical Center. He did not get it from Mr. Ruzzamenti, at least not directly, but the two men will forever share a connection: they were the first and last patients in the longest chain of kidney transplants ever constructed, linking 30 people who were willing to give up an organ with 30 who might have died without one.
More on this domino chain of 60 operations in The New York Times.
What an inspiring story! That has to be good karma for Mr. Ruzzamenti, the buddhist donor.
This is an amazing story.
Thirty people were willing to give up a kidney to save the life of someone who might die without one? This is really an amazing story.
It’s quite interesting to read that hospitals used to reject “Good Samaritan” donors just because they were “too good to be true” and, therefore, they were thought to have some kind of psychological instability just for offering to help strangers. Wow!
Mr. Ruzzamenti had to go through several psychological testings just because he wanted to help other people he didn’t even know…hospitals should probably make the process more pleasant for donors, specially since these are helping doctors and their respective ill patients expecting nothing in return. Beautiful story!
I didn’t understand this exchange system at first glance, but now that I’ve read the article, my first thought is about the algorithm that had to be created to make this complicated process possible. How difficult it would have been to keep track of where each kidney was going, where the surgery would be performed, the time frame, the patients and all of their idiosyncratic characteristics. Most crucial to this process was that, if one mistake were made and one domino failed to fall, the whole chain would have been irreversably destroyed.
Wow.