Kidney exchange in San Antonio

Here's a news release from San Antonio, where Adam Bingaman is doing great things in kidney exchange:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Feb. 10, 2014/NEWS.GNOM.ES/ — Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital (MSTH), a campus of Methodist Hospital,  has performed its 250th  paired kidney exchange, setting a national record for a single hospital, while performing 10 lifesaving exchange transplants during the last week of January.

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“Our philosophy is to help as many people as we can despite the challenges,” said Adam Bingaman, M.D., Ph.D., transplant surgeon and director of the program. “There are over 95,000 people on the kidney transplant waiting list and their chances of receiving a transplant are low, with an average wait of more than five years. Time is against people on dialysis – the sooner we can get them transplanted, the sooner they can return to good health.” Each year about 4,500 Americans die waiting for a kidney.

"The paired donor program at MSTH began in 2008 and has helped to pioneer the field of paired donation, successfully transplanting patients from across the U.S. and international pairs from Canada and Italy. The program’s success hinges on a team approach along with a world-class immunology laboratory. “Our group likes a challenge,” Bingaman said when talking about difficult-to-match patients who have travelled from near and far to receive exchange transplants in San Antonio. “We never get tired of giving folks their lives back, free from a dialysis machine.

"“A special emphasis is on blood type and antibody matching,” he continued. “We ensure each exchange recipient receives a kidney from a donor who is a complete or very close match, often making it unnecessary to utilize high-risk desensitization therapies to enable a transplant between incompatible pairs.”