Second Patient Kidney Exchange Takes Place in NC

The Herald Sun
DURHAM — It started later than scheduled and took longer than planned, but by the end of the day Monday, Sue Gommer and Jeffrey Rogers were expected to have new leases on life.

Gommer and Rogers were the recipients of a set of paired kidney donations. Both suffering from kidney failure, they each received new organs from people they didn’t know during surgical procedures at Duke Hospital. 

The final set of procedures — Sue Gommer’s daughter, Jennifer, donating her kidney to Rogers — didn’t begin until after 6 p.m. and the last one wasn’t scheduled to be finished until late in the evening.

“But so far, everything has gone well,” said Matthew Ellis, the Duke physician who is the kidney transplant team medical director. “The first pair are both doing great and everything is on course.”

The series of operations, under the glare of Chromophare lights, was the first multiple patient kidney exchange in the Triangle and only the second at a North Carolina hospital. It was made possible by Brad Dean, the 43-year-old president of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, who wanted to donate a kidney simply because he thought it was the right thing to do. 

“I’m in good health and I thought I could help someone. This is something I thought about and prayed about for a long time,” Dean said before the operation. “I wanted to do something that could really help people.”

Jennifer Gommer, a 39-year-old pharmacist at Duke, had wanted to donate a kidney to her 67-year-old mother, but wasn’t a blood-type match. Dean was. 

Jennifer Gommer then decided to donate the kidney she had planned on giving to her mother to Rogers, 42, who was a match for her. 

The first of the surgeries, Dean’s laparoscopic nephrectomy, had been scheduled for 7:30 in the morning, but surgeon Deepak Vikraman didn’t start his work until nearly noon. “Things always start later than they’re supposed to,” Ellis said. 

It was just logistical issues, he said. “And because that one was later, that pushed everything back,” Ellis said. “They just had to wait [to do the second set or surgeries] until they got all the logistics straightened out.”

Nearly 90,000 people nationwide are waiting for kidney transplants. Only about 20,000 operations are performed each year and waits for an organ, particularly one from a living donor, can be as long as seven or eight years or even more. Ellis estimated that paired donations could mean performing another 3,000 transplants a year and significantly cut that waiting time.

Duke officials are hoping that publicity about the operations will attract more pairs and altruistic donors like Dean to sign up for donations. 

Read more: The Herald-Sun - The gift of life