In the past year, medical centers in several parts of the United States have launched programs to deal with the phenomenon of relatives or friends who want to donate a kidney to a person in need of a transplant, but whose blood type makes them ineligible.

They have launched "paired donor" programs where they seek to match the prospective donor and recipient to another prospective donor and recipient whose blood types are similarly incompatible.

As an example, a potential donor with Group A blood whose relative or friend had Group B blood would be matched with a couple where the prospective donor had Group B blood but the recipient needed a Group A match.

While logistically complex, several successful paired exchanges have been reported, and this program does have the potential to help a person -- who otherwise does not have a suitable living donor -- get a kidney transplant more quickly than might occur if forced to wait for a cadaver organ.

Presumably, success rates would be similar to those for other living unrelated donors. Please see the data tables for more information on the living unrelated donor kidney success rates.

Thus far, no "paired donor" programs are know to exist for living donor liver transplants.

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