Using deceased donor kidneys to start some kidney exchange chains

It would save some lives... here's a link to the abstract of a forthcoming paper (more like an editorial, really).

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Utilization of Deceased Donor Kidneys to Initiate Living Donor Chains

1. Marc L. Melcher¹, 
2. John P. Roberts^2,*, 
3. Alan B. Leichtman³, 
4. Alvin E. Roth⁴ and
5. Michael A. Rees^5,6

DOI: 10.1111/ajt.13740

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Issue

American Journal of Transplantation

Accepted Article (Accepted, unedited articles published online and citable. The final edited and typeset version of record will appear in future.)

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1. This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review but has not been through the copyediting, typesetting, pagination and proofreading process, which may lead to differences between this version and the Version of Record. Please cite this article as doi: 10.1111/ajt.13740

 Abstract

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Abstract

We propose that some deceased donor kidneys be allocated to initiate non-simultaneous extended altruistic donor chains of living donor kidney transplants to address in part the huge disparity between patients on the deceased donor kidney waitlist and available donors. The use of deceased donor kidneys for this purpose would benefit waitlisted candidates in that most patients enrolled in kidney paired donation systems are also waitlisted for a deceased donor kidney transplant and receiving a kidney through the mechanism of kidney paired donation will decrease pressure on the deceased donor pool. In addition, a living donor kidney usually provides survival potential equal or superior to that of deceased donor kidneys. If kidney paired donation chains that are initiated by a deceased donor can end in a donation of a living donor kidney to a candidate on the deceased donor waitlist, the quality of the kidney allocated to waitlisted patient is likely to be improved. We hypothesize that a pilot program would show a positive impact on patients of all ethnicities and blood types.

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I've recently updated my game theory, experimental economics and market design page, and you can find some updated papers on kidney exchange at http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/alroth.html#KidneyExchange , and on deceased organ donation at http://web.stanford.edu/~alroth/alroth.html#Otherorgan