(Image source: Northwestern Memorial Hospital )

BY GINA COOK

ANCHOR LAUREN ZIMA


As the saying goes — if at first you don’t succeed try — try again. You might say that’s what a certain kidney did after it was transplanted not once — but twice.  WMAQ explains how the kidney made its way from two siblings to a complete stranger.  


“Ray’s sister Cera had offered her kidney to him but a week after surgery the doctors told Ray that the disease that started destroying his kidneys years ago had now begun to attack Cera’s kidney.”


Ray has a disease called FSGS that damages the kidneys.  ABC explains what doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago did after Ray’s body started to reject the new organ.
Doctors say it’s a medical first.


“The kidney was still a relatively healthy and viable organ why not take it out and give it to someone else?”
“It was a risk Erwin Gomez an Indiana retired surgeon was willing to take.”


The siblings recently met Erwin Gomez, the man who became the second recipient of the kidney.  CNN says,

“Gomez's kidneys were irreversibly damaged, he said, after 20 years of struggling with hypertension. Once he received the new kidney, whatever damage that had occurred while it was implanted in Fearing was reversed.”


Doctors got permission from the siblings to do the second transplant.  Health Day spoke with a surgeon that says this procedure raises interesting questions like...


"Should the initial donor and recipient have any input on the second allocation of the kidney? [and] What type of priority [if any] should the first recipient be granted when being considered for a second transplant?"

The surgery was last June — But details of the groundbreaking procedure were published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The Daily Mail spoke with bioethicist Wayne Shelton who says the practice of reusing transplant organs is...


“...tricky - and riskier - because surgeons have to deal with scar tissue that typically forms around an organ as the body heals from the operation. ... doctors need to make sure patients who are offered reused parts understand all the risks … because these cases are so rare, there is little data on how patients with recycled parts fare ...”