National Kidney Registry
The National Kidney Registry (NKR) is a national registry in the United States listing kidney donors and recipients in need of a kidney transplant. NKR facilitates over 450 "Kidney Paired Donation" (KPD) or "Paired Exchange" transplants annually. More than one-third of potential living kidney donors who want to donate their kidney to a friend or family member cannot because of blood type or antibody incompatibility. Historically, these donors would be turned away and the patient would lose the opportunity to receive a life-saving kidney transplant. KPD overcomes donor-recipient incompatibility by swapping kidneys between  multiple donor-recipient pairs, and connecting them in longer chains, as well as taking an altruistic non-directed donor, and start chains of kidney transplants. What the NKR does is consolidate the incompatible pairs of donors and recipients from transplant centers all over the United States, into a single registry, and facilitate the transplant process. History. The NKR was founded in 2007 by the Hil family, after their youngest daughter lost her kidney function at age ten. Both parents were ruled out from donating to their daughter because they were biologically incompatible. After many unsuccessful attempts to find a compatible  donor through all of the kidney paired exchange programs in the United States, a compatible donor was found. After this transplant ordeal, the Hil family founded the National Kidney Registry to eliminate the problem of incompatible donors, by building a national kidney paired donation (KPD) program. The NKR organized its first swap on Valentine’s Day in 2008 at Cornell Medical Center in New York City. This first swap was a 3-deep chain that ended with a bridge donor who donated two months later, extending the chain to 5-deep. This chain was broken after the bridge donor reneged  following many failed cross matches that required the donor to repeatedly go to the hospital for blood draws. The NKR’s second swap started with the shipment of a kidney from Cornell to UCLA School of Medicine. This was the first time a living donor kidney was shipped on a commercial airplane. This second chain crossed the country three times, facilitating eight total transplants at UCLA, Cornell, Stanford University School of Medicine, and California Pacific Medical Center. Ultimately, this chain was broken when the bridge donor reneged. Based on these early experiences, many safeguards were implemented to reduce the risk  of broken chains, which dropped the frequency of broken chains from 33% in 2008 to 2% in 2015. In 2012, the NKR broke the world record for the largest kidney swap by organizing a 30-deep chain involving 60 donors and recipients. This chain was started by Rick Ruzzamenti, a 44-year-old from Riverside, California. The swap took four months to complete and involved 17 different transplant centers across 11 states. Three years later, on March 26, the next record breaking chain was set into motion by Kathy Hart, a 48-year-old attorney from Minneapolis. This swap took  two months to complete and involved 26 different transplant centers. The NKR has facilitated 3214 kidney transplants, as of March 17, 2019. Key Innovations. The rapid growth of KPD transplants in the United States has been driven by the following key NKR innovations. Media Coverage. The NKR's innovations have generated significant media coverage including a front page story in the "New York Times". and nationally televised interviews by Katie Couric with the "CBS Evening News". Diane Sawyer from ABC News, and Byron Pitts at "Nightline".