Donate a Kidney Now; Get a Voucher for One Later

Howard Broadman, a lawyer and retired judge from California, knows his grandson, Quinn, will probably one day require a kidney transplant. By the time Quinn needs his help, however, Broadman said he may be dead or too old to donate a healthy organ. "I approached UCLA and asked, 'Why don't I give a kidney to someone who needs it now, then get a voucher for my grandson to use when he needs a transplant in the future?' And that's just what we did," Broadman said in a statement. How the program works Broadman worked with Dr. Jeffrey Veale, a transplant surgeon who helped initiate the program at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. The voucher program is relatively simple. A person donates their kidney and selects a recipient for a future donation. The recipient receives a voucher that can be used if they need a living kidney donation. Living kidney donations are made when a person who is alive donates one of their two kidneys and goes on living with the remaining one. The program could change the face of kidney donation in the United States, bringing more donors to the operating table. Essentially, you donate when it is convenient and others receive if it's necessary, Veale told Healthline. The American Society of Transplant Surgeons has endorsed the program, which is being used at nine other transplant programs across the United States under the umbrella of the National Kidney Registry (NKR). There are 26 million people with chronic kidney disease in the United Stat...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news