First 16-Patient Domino Donor Kidney Transplant

BALTIMORE, Md. (WUSA) -- Eight people getting new kidneys from eight unrelated donors at four hospitals in four states.

It may seem like a twisted math puzzle, but the mixing and then matching of donors from across the nation has led to the first sixteen patient "domino donor" kidney transplant.

The multi-hospital effort included teams at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St.Louis, INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Chief of Transplant Surgery at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine says the last in a domino of surgeries to transplant eight kidneys was completed last night and Dr. Montgomery says for that last recipient, getting that organ was truly a matter of life or death.

Surgeon Robert Montgomery explains, "She was literally days or weeks away from dying."

The kidney swap involving patients in Maryland, Michigan, Oklahoma and Missouri helped find matches where none existed before, including for a married couple from Rockville.

"I have an 'O' kidney, which is a very difficult position to be in if you need a kidney, so the odds against getting a kidney are slim," explains Bob Brinkmann.

Lisa Brinkmann wasn't a match for her husband Bob, however to complete the swap program she ended up giving a healthy kidney to a man in Detroit, and Bob got his from an unrelated donor at Johns Hopkins.

"People say thank you, you're a hero, I say it was selfish, I wanted my husband back, I knew the person he was before that and it really is minimally invasive," says Lisa.

Dr. Montgomery says encouraging a national kidney swap program could help ease the critical shortage of organs we face today.

As for what this means for the future of transplants, Dr. Montgomery says, "A transplant surgeon can maybe do 2,000 transplants in their lifetime, the work that we're doing here will be responsible for thousands."

For patients like Bob, his only regret and now his advice to people is, "...apply, to the program as soon as you can, don't wait."

A new national model has of kidney transplants, Dr. Montgomery says could result in an estimated 1,500 additional transplants each year.

With tears of joy, Bob recalls when he first got the call that a kidney was available, "It's amazing, I still remember how the odds were very slim it would happen, afterwards everything came fixed."