site.btaLives of Three Patients from Bulgaria, Turkiye Saved in Cross-over Transplantation

Two women - a Turkish and a Bulgarian woman, and a Bulgarian man are living a second life thanks to a cross-over transplantation, performed at the Bahcesehir University's Faculty of Medicine in Istanbul.    

Crossover transplants are used when a healthy partner in a couple, for example, is unable to donate his or her kidney to the spouse, either because of blood group incompatibility or the potential recipient's sensitisation to certain antibodies. In a crossover transplantation a healthy person in one couple donates his or her kidney to the ill person in another couple, in exchange for a kidney from the recipient's healthy spouse.

The Turkish man, Muhittin Oguz, 63, applied to become a donor to his wife Zeynep, who had been on dialysis for four years. And Paulina Boyadjieva, from Bulgaria, wanted to donate her kidney to her daughter Iveta Marinova, who has suffered from kidney failure for eight years. However, due to incompatibility of blood groups, their applications were not accepted. They then applied for cross-over transplantation.

The chance for the two women came from a Bulgarian man named, Ventsislav Venkov, who also needed a kidney. In order to save the sick Zeynep and Iveta, the Venkovs willingly agreed to undergo a cross-over kidney transplant.

The three operations were performed simultaneously by three surgeons led by Dr. Soykan Barlas over a period of about 10 hours. Paulina's kidney was successfully transplanted to Zeynep Oguz, Muhittin Oguz's kidney to Ventsislav Venkov, and Maria Venkova's kidney to Iveta Marinova.

Dr Soykan Barlas, said there are about 24,000 patients waiting for kidney transplant in Turkiye and nearly 60,000 patients who are on dialysis. Unfortunately, the organ donation rate from brain dead people in Turkiye is very low and attempts are made to save the lives of patients with organ transplants from living donors.