On November 14, 2006, surgeons with The Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center performed what is believed to be the world’s first "quintuple swap" kidney transplant operation. Five transplant candidates simultaneously received new kidneys in an operation that took 12 surgeons, six operating rooms, and five donors.
Johns Hopkins Director of the CTC, Robert Montgomery, MD, PhD called this "a triumph of the human spirit."
Four organ recipients had come to Johns Hopkins separately for evaluation, each with a willing donor who was not of a compatible blood or tissue type.
The Hopkins "Incompatible Kidney Transplant Program" provides a way to swap kidneys among the pairs, if patients are willing to exchange their donor’s kidney for a kidney from another donor. This would allow all to receive a compatible kidney from someone they had never met.
There was a special element to this story: the gift of a kidney from an altruistic donor, Ms. Honore ("Honey") Rothstein.
An altruistic donor is somebody who is willing to give a kidney to anyone who needs it. While four recipients already had (incompatible) donors, the fifth recipient was waiting on the national organ list for a deceased donor kidney and was able to be transplanted because Honey stepped forward.
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All five were paired with a compatible donor through a "domino" process (see chart above). Honey donated to Kristine, a young woman from Maine, and Kristine’s original donor (her adopted mother) donated to the next recipient, and so on. See related article on swap participants.
