ABO Incompatible Kidney Transplant - Know More About It!

ABO Incompatible Kidney Transplant is a kind of transplant taking place between the donor, whose blood type is not compatible with that of the patient, who is in need of the kidney. The only option was to get the transplant pairs of the recipient donor identified with the types of ABO blood that were compatible.

Present Scenario
In the current situation, this ABO incompatible kidney transplant is possible to get conducted between certain recipients and living donors. When there is only one available donor there are options available for the patient:

1. To get placed for Organ Sharing cadaveric-donor kidney waiting list.
2. To enter into a paired donor exchange program
3. Let us take a closer look at these options:
4. The UNOS Cadaveric-Donor Kidney Waiting List
5. Getting the candidate placed on the UNOS cadaveric-donor waiting list seems to be quite simple and straightforward but it is actually quite troublesome for those candidates, with blood group O or B.
6. The time for which a candidate needs to wait is on the rise for all blood groups but it is more so for those having O or B. The number of new registrations which gets added to the list is also increasing
7. Longer waiting time for kidney transplant means increased exposure to risk of leading to death. The average yearly rate of death for waiting list patients is more than 6%.

Donor kidney exchange

• Second option available is to get into one of the donor exchange programs that have come to light over the last few years.
• When a living pair of donor and recipient is found to be ABO-incompatible, then it is possible to achieve two ABO-compatible transplants by means of a direct exchange with another pair.
• Another type can occur when one pair of donor-recipient is incompatible and the other one is compatible but not identical. Getting these donors swapped result in two ABO-compatible living-donor kidney transplants.