Saint Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey has broken the record for the largest living donor transplant chain for a single hospital in the country. It all started with one donor triggered a 15-way kidney swap, which has now grown to 46 people and it’s still going.
Transplant chains let willing donors give kidneys to anyone who’s a match. Hospitals and transplant centers can link up several non-matching pairs of patients and move around the available kidneys so everyone ends up with the right organ for them.
The original donor, Brian Glennon said “The recovery time is just a little blip in my life compared to the lifestyle that my recipient is going to have. I would do it again in a heartbeat.”