Align OPTN KPD Blood Type Matching Policy and Establish Donor Re-Evaluation Requirements

At a glance

Current policy

Currently, the OPTN Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) program has a different blood type matching policy compared to OPTN Kidney Allocation policy. The proposal seeks to align the OPTN KPD policy with kidney allocation policy to provide clarity to transplant programs and patients, while also improving the efficiency of the KPD program. Additionally, KPD donors in the OPTN KPD program are currently only evaluated by their transplant program when they first enter the KPD program. Since donor information can change over time, the committee wants to require that donors in the OPTN KPD program are re-evaluated each year. That way, the most up to date donor information is available when trying to match donor kidneys with potential recipients.

Supporting media

Presentation

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Proposed changes

• Align OPTN Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) blood type matching policy with the blood type matching policy in OPTN kidney allocation policy
• Require annual OPTN KPD donor re-evaluation to include:
  • Psychosocial evaluation
  • Medical evaluation
  • Informed consent evaluation

Anticipated impact

• What it's expected to do
  • Improve efficiency of OPTN KPD system
  • Increase the OPTN KPD match success rate
  • Potentially increase the number of transplants

Terms to know

• Kidney Paired Donation (KPD): a process that matches one medically incompatible living donor-candidate pair with another, so the donor in each pair is medically compatible with the candidate in the other pair
• Donor evaluation: consultation with a medical team to determine a potential donor’s overall health and if they would be a suitable candidate for living donation

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Read the full proposal