Kidney chain reaction gives life to 30 people

A year ago, an electrical contractor named Rick Ruzzamenti walked into a California hospital and offered to donate a kidney, no strings attached.

This set in motion what became the world’s longest living donor kidney transplant chain, which ended at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood when a Joliet man became the last of 30 people to receive a kidney as a result of Ruzzamenti’s original donation.

“This kidney chain has brought me back to life,” said Don Terry, 46.

Another Loyola patient, Paulette Behan, of West Chicago, was the 12th patient in the chain as it hop-scotched back and forth across the country.

Donor chains, a fairly recent phenomenon, evolved because often it is not enough for someone suffering from kidney disease to find a family member or friend to donate a kidney.

The kidneys must match. But many times, even among family members, they don’t.

Ruzzamenti’s original no-strings donation went to a man whose niece wanted to give him a kidney, but was not a match. However, in return for the kidney that went to her uncle, the niece donated her kidney to someone else who did match, according to a New York Times story chronicling the chain. And the chain continued until it ended in December at Loyola with Terry, who had no living donor, but was among the best available matches for the last kidney.

Every chain begins with a Good Samaritan donor, who places no conditions on where the kidney ends up. And every chain ends with a recipient who does not have a living donor.

Chains are assembled by computer software that examines millions of possible combinations and spits out chains of matching donors with the tap of a keyboard.

Without a matching friend or family member, patients must wait five to ten years for a kidney from a deceased donor. But patients participating in a chain get a live kidney within six months, Loyola transplant surgeon Dr John Milner said.

Loyola was the first area hospital to participate in a national kidney chain, The University of Chicago Hospitals also make use of kidney chains.

Such chains could vastly increase the number of kidney transplants, but not until enough people participate, Milner said.

“There are people right now today in this city who have willing healthy living donors who don’t match their recipients but don’t know about this programme,” Milner said.

The record-breaking chain did not begin at Loyola, but the hospital has started 13 other chains. Five were initiated by Loyola employees who donated their kidneys.