New rules bring kidneys to difficult-to-match patients

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

A shake-up of the nation’s kidney-transplant system means more organs are getting to patients once thought nearly impossible to match, according to early tracking of the new rules.

It’s been a year since the United Network for Organ Sharing changed rules for the transplant waiting list, aiming to decrease disparities and squeeze the most benefit from a scarce resource: kidneys from deceased donors. Now data from UNOS shows that the changes are helping certain patients, including giving those expected to live the longest a better shot at the fittest kidneys.

The hope is to “really level the playing field,” said Dr. Mark Aeder, a transplant surgeon at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland who is chairman of the UNOS’ kidney committee.

There’s a huge gap between who needs a new kidney and who gets one. More than 101,000 people are on the national waiting list, but only about 17,000 kidney transplants are performed each year. Roughly 11,000 of them are with kidneys donated from someone who just died; the rest occur when a patient is able to find a living donor.

The new kidney-allocation system can’t alleviate the overall organ shortage. Instead, the policy altered how deceased-donor kidneys are distributed, shifting priorities so that how long you’ve been on the waiting list isn’t the main factor.