A fly in the ointment

I received a call from the hospital on Thursday (Valentines day) to bring me up to speed with my brothers latest tests and the current state of play.

I don't think I've mentioned this before but I had a whole heap of blood tests done a few months ago that were sent off to Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital (this is where the operation will be done, by the way)  to be cross matched with my brothers blood samples.

The cross matching test indicates if specific immune reactivity is present between the donor and recipient. The test involves mixing the recipients blood with the donor's blood. The recipient may have antibodies that could injure the donor's cells - a positive cross match. Meaning that the recipient would probably reject the donor's implanted kidney.

The result of this cross match test was a negative cross match - this is a good thing, means the blood incompatible transplant will work.

The phone call I got on Thursday was to tell me that latest set of bloods, that were taken from my brother at his last check up, had a positive reaction when cross matched with mine. This is not great!
They don't know why this has happened or what caused the change, just that it happens sometimes.

Now our next step is tissue-type cross matching. This involves my brother and I going to the Kidney Unit together and giving several blood samples which will then be sent to Guys once again, to be tested.

The tissue-type of a person is determined by 'marker' proteins. The higher the percentage of proteins that match, the greater the chance that the transplant will be successful. This involves looking closely at our DNA. More information on this can be found here: http://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/

Ideally, we want a negative result. However, tissue incompatible transplants can still be performed, this does carry higher risks and my brother would need extra treatments  to give the procedure the best chance for success this would include plasma exchange.

In July 2011, St' George's Hospital performed it's first tissue incompatible kidney transplant. Read the full story here: St George's tissue incompatible transplant

I think you'll agree that there is plenty to take in there. It's taken me this long to get my head around it and do a bit of research and I'm still not completely clear on it.

So we just have to wait for our appointment to come through, which I'm told should only be a couple of weeks. I'm also told that the tests I still need have finally been requested from the relevant departments, so, it shouldn't be much longer. Fingers crossed!