What’s the most kidney transplants a single person has received?
Is there a point of diminishing returns? ie, the next new (perfect match) kidney will do more harm than good?
I personally know someone who has had two kidney transplants - the first one lasted, I think, a little over ten years before failing, after which he got another one. So, at least two. Wouldn’t surprise me if someone has had more than that.
I’ve definitely heard of someone having 3 transplants and I doubt that’s the limit.
However, I believe it does become increasingly difficult. Even a “perfect match” kidney will cause the host immune system to react, just less than a non-matched kidney would (hence the need for immunosuppressive drugs). Once the immune system is sensitised to these antigens, it’s more likely to react badly to a further transplant, so it gets increasingly difficult to find a good match.
I started googling “fourth kidney transplant” then “fifth kidney transplant” etc. I found several with 5, and two with 6. However, the two with 6 were just mentioned by someone in each case and didn’t come from a reliable news source or a medical publication. I didn’t find any with 7.
This is one of the sixers. It’s from a message board.
http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?p=133035&sid=95db25b6bc35f35160d627895a14a376
Thanks for the replies, that’s pretty much what I wanted to know.
I know someone with 2, and will likely need a third.
An interesting tidbit about kidney transplants, is they don’t take out the old ones, they just keep adding in the new ones. I always found that interesting, anyways.
My understanding (from discussions with a friend who had 2 kidney transplants) is that absent some specific reason to do so they don’t remove either of the person’s original (and now failed) kidneys. Transplanted kidneys are put in a different place (the abdomen) where there’s plenty of room. Should a second transplant be needed, the first transplanted kidney will be removed.
I guess it varies on specific situations, and the level of kidney failure. I honestly should really know more about this. When my sister had her second transplant, they just added on the (now 4th) kidney. The reasoning was, even if the first transplant was not functioning enough to do the job on its own (failed), it was still functioning/contributing on some minimal level.
I imagine if there is no function left, room could become an issue after multiple transplants, so just take it out.
Since dialysis machines seem to do a reasonable job, why can’t they be miniaturized and implanted? I suppose it’s the pumps but something must pump the blood through the kidneys.
The technology that would allow this is a long ways off - the kidney is rather a marvel of compact function.
My friend told me of experiments in which human DNA is somehow placed within a pig embryo, resulting in a pig with kidneys that are a precise match to the DNA donor. It may thus be possible to grow yourself a matching kidney, thuse avoiding the main problem of a transplant: the brutal and neverending course of anti-rejection drugs.
We hear occasionally of an organ whose mission has a lot to do with pumping blood.
The first one was from my dad when I was 8yrs old and it was a 5 antigen match. All the rest were from organ donors and were perfect matches. Ages 17, 24, & 26. I have my native kidneys and 3 of the 4 transplanted ones. They only remove them if there is some serious problem with them. My third one had to removed after 9 wks due to serious infection. Because of the way they hook them up I also lost a good portion of my right leg artery. It has since been bypassed to my aorta.
And they can no longer put a kidney on that side.
I am waiting for a decision from my transplant clinic on whether or they will do a 5th one on me.
And also “Perfect Match” means that not only did all 6 antigens match but all of the antibodies matched as well. I still had to take the anti rejection meds but being a perfect match meant it was less likely to reject right away. Unfortunately, I had complications with the fourth one as well and it only lasted 4 yrs.
So, far the one from my dad has lasted the longest, 8 1/2 yrs. And the second comes in next at 5 yrs.
Every time a kidney rejects your body can build more antibodies and this can make you very sick.
My kidneys failed when I was 7 yrs old and I’m just over 40 yrs old!
They’re making progress in the field with a new way to call off the immune system without the need for immunosuppressive drugs. It makes use of a concept called chimerism, where, in this situation, they seed the recipient’s bone marrow with the donor’s progenitor cells, so their body is now making two sets of immune cells. I haven’t read the original article yet to see the finer details, but apparently the presence of the donor’s immune cells reduces or removes the need for the recipient to take immunosuppressants. If this technique works and works well, it has the potential to help a lot more people get the transplants they need, without worrying about rejection.
Wow. I love science.
Krisna, thanks for sharing your experiences. Out of curiosity, how is your right leg doing? Was it able to reroute the blood flow okay?
(Also, just so you know, this is kind of an old thread, which we like to call a Zombie Thread. So if people start posting jokes about kidneys looking for Brrrraaaaaains, you’ll know why. No harm, no foul, just a bunch of wiseacres on this message board!)
Last summer I met a man who had been through 5 liver transplants. I was shocked such a thing was even possible.
His wife and he were wonderful people who’d been to death’s door so many times. But each time they made it out alive. Astounding!
My leg is doing fine. I have to go in every few yrs to have the blood pressures tested. They have me walk on a treadmill while they take blood pressures every few minutes.
Actually, dialysis machines do a relatively bad job compared to the kidneys. They don’t filter all of the same stuff, and they don’t do some of the other things the kidneys do, like hormonal regulation.
That’s great!