Talking to nephrologists about kidney exchange

Most conversations about kidney exchange (aka kidney paired donation, kpd) are with transplant professionals. But kidney patients start out being referred to a nephrologist, and so it was good to be able to talk to nephrologists at the recent meeting of the National Kidney Foundation.

My talk was about how kidney exchange has made a lot of progress, and become a standard part of transplantation, but that there's still room for it to grow and help more patients get transplants.   In that regard I focused on two recent initiatives, starting a non-directed donor chain with a deceased donor kidney, and global kidney exchange to bring developing world patient-donor pairs into American kidney exchange to the mutual benefit of both kinds of pairs.

Here's a news story from Nephrology News (with a headline that unfortunately disses the many pioneers of kidney exchange):

Father of kidney exchange says it’s time for a refresh

And here's a story that focuses on starting kidney exchange chains with a deceased donor kidney, from the Dutch Nier nieuws (Kidney news)

'Start donatieketting met overleden donor'
("Start donation chain with deceased donor")