Trini couple in world historic ‘kidney swap’ surgery

A Trinidadian woman was one of three persons in the US to receive a kidney transplant in what is believed to be the world’s first simultaneous “triple swap” kidney transplant operation last Monday at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland.

Germaine Allum, a former student of Holy Name Convent, Port-of-Spain underwent a successful kidney transplant although her fianc?, Paul Boissiere’s blood proved incompatible with hers, but matched that of another recipient. “We each have a piece of each other inside us,” said Germaine through tears at a hospital news conference on Friday. A woman from Miami, a woman from Pittsburgh and a teenager from Maryland, all of whom were on dialysis, came to the Baltimore hospital with donors whose blood or tissue types didn’t match their own. Nurses made matches between the three pairs from a hospital database of about 60 pairs, and doctors performed all the surgeries on Monday.

Lead surgeon Dr Robert Montgomery called the 11 hours of coordinated surgeries, with nurses rushing kidneys in labelled coolers from the donors to the recipients, “logistically, a monumental experience.” “It was really possible because these three donors desperately wanted to see their loved ones receive a kidney and were open to any possibility to make that happen,” he said. The operations were done simultaneously because organs can be damaged the longer they are kept outside the body, without blood circulating through them. He also said it’s important “to avoid any possibility of anyone backing out, someone getting in a car accident, whatever. If all the operations start at the same time, it removes those variables.” Montgomery said the patients and donors were doing well and had cleared the most dangerous time for transplant patients — the first few days after an operation.

The donors were Julia Tower, 57, from Hyattsville; Connie Dick, 41, from Latrobe, Pennsylvania; and Paul Boissiere, 30, from Trinidad and presently residing at Coral Gables, Florida. The recipients were Jeremy Weiser-Warschoff, 13, from Silver Spring; Tracy Stahl, 39, from Johnstown, Pa, and Allum, 30, also from Trinidad  living in Florida.