Kidney Transplant Program honors donors and recipients

Christiana Care’s Kidney Transplant Program hosted its fourth annual banquet to recognize living donors and recipients during National Organ Donation Month, April 28 at the White Clay Creek Country Club.

The program has completed more than 113 kidney transplants. About 34 percent of those procedures have involved living donors. Chief of Transplant Surgery S. John Swanson, M.D., observed that each living donor’s selfless act not only saved one life from dialysis, but two. He explained that living donors, in donating a kidney to their loved one, do not use a deceased donor kidney, which allows another kidney failure patient on the waiting list also to receive a transplant.