The Process of Identifying a Living Donor
To find a living kidney donor, recipients have several options including:
1. Working with a ‘living kidney chain’, also known as paired kidney donation. See the Kidney Registry website.
2. Finding a compatible match in one's family (siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, etc.)
3. Seeking an unrelated living kidney donor from sources such as the nonprofit websites such as MatchingDonors.com or LivingDonorsOnline.org, organizations that have been featured in reputable national media outlets such as Good Morning America New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and People Magazine.
MedToGo Donor Identification Assistance
Kidney transplant patients who work with MedToGo will have access to a donor identification consultant team - including a physician and a successful living donor kidney transplant recipient – to navigate the sometimes complex process of finding a living donor. Countries such as Mexico and Costa Rica have strict guidelines regarding altruistic kidney donation between non-related individuals so we can only facilitate surgeries overseas for patients who have identified related living donors.
Working With Living Donor Consultant: What to Expect
Your Living Donor Consultant will work closely with your Transplant Coordinator to assist you in the set up and completion of the necessary cross-match, tissue typing and blood type matching tests which are performed to ensure the donor and recipient have compatible blood types, as well as sufficient immunological compatibility for a transplant to be possible.
Week 1: Your Transplant Coordinator will connect you with your Living Donor Consultant
Week 2: Your Donor Consultant will help you set up an online profile on websites that match donors with recipients, including selecting the right profile pictures and helping edit the profile text.
Week 3:Your Donor Consultant will review each prospective match, against a matching criteria checklist.
Week 4-11: The process for identifying a prospective donor who meets the initial match criteria can take from 30-120 days or longer.
Week 12:When a prospective donor has been identified your Transplant Coordinator will help to arrange the compatibility test (aka Type and Crossmatch). This test can be arranged in the US with results shared (always compliant with HIPPA regulations) with the transplant team.
When a matching donor has been identified, the date for the transplant surgery will be set, including a schedule for planning the required week-long pre-transplant testing protocol for recipient and the donor. Protocol tests that are less than six months old may not need to be repeated, although all transplant patients must have their cardiological work-up at the Hospital.
