UCSF Transplant Surgeon Dr. Sandy Feng to Lead Consensus Conference on Kidney Paired Donation (KPD)

In excess of 90,000 people are on the waiting list for kidney transplants, fewer than 17,000 receive one each year, and about 4,500 die on the waiting list. Even where a relative or friend is willing to donate a kidney, the kidney may not be a biological match. To address this problem, paired kidney exchange programs were created. Although it has been more than a decade since the first paired kidney exchange took place in the US, there is still no uniform system for these exchanges. Sandy Feng, M.D., Ph.D., a transplant surgeon at UCSF, is currently organizing the Consensus Conference on Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) taking place at the end of March 2012. Members of several stakeholder organizations, including the American Society of Transplantation (AST), the American Societies of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and Nephrology (ASN), will discuss "pressing issues limiting implementation of KPD and develop a consensus-driven model to overcome barriers."