Organ donation to another's partner

24 April 2007

BRUSSELS – The seven university transplant centres in Belgium are putting their heads together to develop a protocol for cross-over kidney donation, various Flemish papers report today.

The arrangement would allow living donors to trade places to find a suitable match. Throughout Belgium about 40 transplants are performed each year with a kidney donated by a patient’s relative or friend. The Ghent hospital has the most experience with this: parent to child donation is the most common, followed by donation by sibling, and then donation by spouse.

In order to increase the chances of finding a suitable donor, the seven transplant centres want to work out a protocol which would allow cross-donation if a suitable donor cannot be found for a patient. In the event that you are not a compatible donor for your own wife, another patient’s husband may turn out to be a suitable donor. And you in turn might be a suitable donor for that man’s spouse.

The seven centres estimate that this could increase the number of kidney donations from living donors to 80 or even 100.

Subject: Belgian news

Organ donation to another’s partner