Linda Wood, BSN, RN, is a liver transplant nurse and coordinator at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Here she tells about a special program offered at Penn Medicine for people who are interested in live liver donation but live far from the greater Philadelphia area.
As the region’s largest and most experienced liver transplant program, it’s not a surprise that our team is able to offer Penn liver transplant patients the opportunity to pursue both living and deceased donor options.
While our program is well-known for its clinical expertise in live donor liver transplant, not many people know about the special services we offer for people who are interested in exploring live liver donation at Penn but currently live far from the Delaware Valley.
Interestingly, about 40 percent of our living donor candidates live outside of the greater Philadelphia area, and donors from all over the United States routinely contact us about how we partner with people who are interested in sharing the gift of life through live liver donation with a friend or loved one.
The Distance Donor Program
To meet the unique needs of donor candidates who have work and family commitments far from Penn, we developed the Distance Donor Program – a special evaluation protocol designed to accommodate donors who must take a plane, interstate train or interstate bus to travel to our center. The program is also perfect for donors who have greater than a two-and-a-half-hour drive to us.
As part of the program, Distance Donors are asked to stay in the Philadelphia area for a few days during which we can get most (if not all) of the donor work-up completed. Before enrolling in the Distance Donor Program, the donor candidate needs to:
- Meet certain age and health criteria.
- Be blood type compatible to their intended recipient.
- Be a relative or close friend of their intended recipient or their immediate family.
While much of the donor work-up must take place at Penn, testing that can be done local to the donor candidate is maximized.
The National Living Donor Assistant Grant
Now that you know some details about how we partner with distance donors, it’s important for you also to know about the National Living Donor Assistant Grant. This support for living donors is made available through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is offered to qualifying donors to assist with travel expenses (airfare, gasoline, train fare, etc), lodging, food and other expenses as well.
If you’re interested in being evaluated on behalf of a child who is on the UNOS transplant waiting list at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), our team partners closely with CHOP to facilitate those donor work-ups and is ready to answer any questions you may have about that special type of live donor liver transplant.
In a time when the number of deceased donors cannot meet the demands of the increasing number patients waiting for a liver transplant, we encourage patients on the liver transplant waiting list to broaden your consideration and look to family and friends near and far. Please have all potential donors contact our office at 215-615-0564 for more information about this service.