| Altruistic Donor
Triggers 3-Way Transplant
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Matchmaker Janet Hiller, center, the transplant
nurse who coordinated the complicated procedure, with Lisa and Scott
Keller, two of the six kidney donors and recipients. |
Last year, Barry Mendez traveled to Baltimore from his native London
to help a friend recuperate from a kidney donation performed at Hopkins.
He was so moved by the experience, he decided to donate one of his own
kidneys to anyone who needed it. Little did Mendez realize that his
decision would help not one, but three people receive healthy kidneys.
On May 15, in what’s believed to be the first “domino”
triple-exchange kidney transplant, surgeons at the Comprehensive Transplant
Center removed one of Mendez’s kidneys and placed it into the
abdomen of Scott Keller, a 30-year-old computer draftsman from Kalamazoo
who had waited 15 years for a kidney. At the same time, Keller’s
wife, Lisa, donated one of her kidneys to 64-year-old Robert O’Hara
of Vestal, N.Y. And O’Hara’s daughter, Kelley, of Falls
Church, Va., donated a kidney to Ashley Day, a police detective from
Altoona, Pa.
Before the surgeries, transplant specialists had searched their database
of patients awaiting kidneys to find the best possible matches. The
complicated three-way operation, requiring a team of 50 CTC physicians
and other caregivers, was the third performed at Hopkins—and the
third in the United States. It was the first such transplant to use
a donor with no prior personal connection to any of the recipients.
All six donors and recipients recovered quickly, according to CTC Director
Bob Montgomery. Mendez’s donation, he said, “was an almost
unimaginable act of kindness.”
—Judy Minkove |
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