UMass Memorial Medical Center Partners with National Kidney Registry (NKR) to Facilitate Life-Saving Kidney Transplants Through Paired Exchange

The Adult Transplant team at UMass Memorial Medical Center is thrilled to announce our partnership with the National Kidney Registry (NKR). The NKR is a prestigious national registry dedicated to matching kidney donors and recipients in need of life-saving transplants. Through this collaboration, our team is proud to be a part of over 450 successful "Kidney Paired Donation" (KPD) or "Paired Exchange" transplants each year.

A significant number of potential living kidney donors are unable to donate to their loved ones due to blood type or antibody incompatibility. Previously, these donors would have been turned away, and patients would have lost the opportunity to receive a life-saving kidney transplant. The NKR's KPD program overcomes this incompatibility by swapping kidneys between multiple donor-recipient pairs and creating longer chains. Additionally, the program includes altruistic non-directed donors, allowing for even more chains of kidney transplants.

As a result of this partnership, we can provide our waitlisted recipients with matching kidneys much faster. Furthermore, our donors can take advantage of several benefits, including the Donor Shield, Voucher Program, and Remote Donation. The NKR consolidates the incompatible pairs of donors and recipients from transplant centers across the United States into a single registry and streamlines the transplant process.

If you're interested in learning more about our "Paired Exchange Program," please submit our contact form, and one of our transplant team members will be happy to get in touch with you