23 People Donate Kidneys To Strangers At Livingston Hospital

LIVINGSTON, NJ — Every year, about 300 miracles take place at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, which runs one of the largest kidney transplant programs in the country. But sometimes, an avalanche of altruism starts with a single good deed.

On Wednesday, Saint Barnabas posted a video of several local patients offering a heartfelt message to the stranger who started a “kidney donation chain” that has forever changed the lives of 23 people over the past seven or eight months.

Hospital staff called it the "longest single-center kidney transplant chain that’s been performed in the United States." (Watch video below)

Here’s how the unique arrangement works, according to hospital staff:

“In a kidney chain, if a patient needs a transplant and has a potential donor, but that donor is incompatible to them, that donor can then give to someone else… And that patient will then receive a kidney from a donor who is also incompatible with the patient that they intended to give to. So A gives to B, and B gives to C, and C gives to D.”

The 23-person chain at Saint Barnabas was started by a single donor, Brian Glennon, who came to the hospital’s Renal and Pancreas Transplant Division Chief Shamkant Mulgaonkar with an amazingly altruistic offer… give one of my kidneys to a stranger.

“I decided to donate because I reflected on my life and realized that one thing I was missing was giving back,” Glennon explained. “Organ donation is something that I care very deeply about.”

Saint Barnabas has routinely ranked among the top five transplant programs in the country in volume, according to hospital administrators. During 2016, the hospital's Renal and Pancreas Transplant Division completed 304 kidney transplants, topping its previous record of 301 set in 2015. Half of those are made through living donor transplants.

For more information about the hospital’s kidney transplant program click here.

• See related article: Livingston Hospital Breaks It's All-Time Record For Kidney Transplants
• See related article: Kidney Donors Meet Recipients At Livingston Hospital

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Photo: Saint Barnabas Medical Center

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