Baltimore- It took 12 surgeons, six operating rooms and five donors to pull it off, but five strangers simultaneously received new organs in what hospital officials yesterday described as the first ever quintuple kidney transplant.
All five recipients-three men and two women-were doing fine, as were the five female donors, said Eric Vohr, a spokesman at the John Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center. The ten participants came from Canada, Maine, Maryland, West Virginia, Florida and California.
Several triple transplants have been done at John Hopkins, but hospital officials said the five simultaneous transplants were a first.
Four of the sick patients had approached John Hopkins with a relative who was willing to donate a kidney but was an incompatible donor. The fifth patient had been on a waiting list for a kidney from a dead person.
Together, those nine people and an “altruistic donor”- someone willing to give a kidney to anyone who needed it-had enough kidneys among them to pull off the swap.
Once the swap was agreed to, the transplants were done all at the same time to prevent anyone from backing out. Dr. Robert Montgomery, head of the transplant team, said “this is what’s possible when people work together”.
-Associated Press
