Grey's Anatomy "Domino Transplant"

This week on Grey's Anatomy, Bailey heads up a team of surgeons performing a "domino procedure" in which each surgery hinges on the one preceding it.

Grey’s Anatomy was likely inspired by recent real-life “domino” or “kidney swap” transplants. For example:

• Surgical teams at Johns Hopkins performed what is believed to be the first six-way donor kidney swap among 12 individuals on April 5, 2008. The 10-hour surgeries used six operation rooms and occupied nine surgical teams at The Johns Hopkins Hospital http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2008/04_08_08.html
  


• At UCLA, carefully orchestrated surgeries, first in New York and then at UCLA in Los Angeles, represent one of the West Coast's first three-way living-donor kidney transplant chains, and one of the first transcontinental live-kidney donations. http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/080804_kidney_swap.aspx

Domino transplants are a rare but effective (and dramatic!) way of overcoming the shortage of organs available for transplant.

“This donor chain may enable hundreds of patients to receive a kidney, thanks to one generous altruistic donor, rather than in the past, where only one patient benefited from an altruistic donor. This could significantly decrease the waiting list for kidney transplantation." Dr. Jeffrey Veale, assistant professor of urology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the paired-donation program.