Hacker News

Celebrating the 100th birthday of the kidney donated to him as a teenager

90 points by gscott 3 days ago | 22 comments

phibz 3 hours ago

The math here is a little confusing, but that's an exceptionally long lived organ. For reference I received a kidney transplant from my mother at 16. It lasted 19 years after being transplanted. My mother was 68 when I had to return to dialysis.

astura 3 hours ago

TFA mentioned this is very exceptional, it says both that it's the longest lasting transplant this hospital has ever done and that a living kidney donation typically lasts 15 to 20 years. Meaning your 19 years is typical.

The transplant itself was done 48 years ago and the mother was 52 at the time (thus the kidney was already 52 yrs old at the time of transplant)

martyvis 2 hours ago

More simple put, his mother was born 100 years ago and her kidney lives on.

hammock 11 minutes ago

Mothers kidney: 100

Son: 64

Son’s transplant of mothers kidney: 48

Typical kidney transplant lifespan: 15-20

Wittie 3 hours ago

The detail that got me: both on gurneys holding hands, and the mom crying tells him "don't worry about a thing, I've got a Genesis concert and I'm not missing it". They both made it to the concert. He still has the ticket stub

d_silin 30 minutes ago

There is an observation that donated organs sync to a biological age of the recipient.

https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/can-transplanted-heart-be...

cfiggers 14 minutes ago

Ok so he needs to also donate it to a third person. Let's see how long we can keep it going!

zorobo 21 minutes ago

I read somewhere that transplanted organs adopt the age of the recipient, contradicting the hopes of people who want to live forever by replacing their organs regularly.

Didn’t Putin allude to that recently ?

In any case that’d be good news, it would augment the organ availability by allowing older donors!

bjornsing 12 minutes ago

Yeah Putin was heard talking / bragging to Xi about it not so long ago, if I remember correctly.

elchief 43 minutes ago

i wonder if there are any kidneys or other organs on their 3rd person...

like the donee dies, and the original kidney goes on to someone else

JohnTHaller 2 hours ago

I donated a kidney to my Dad in 2000. It gave him an extra 23 years with us. He was on very low doses of his anti-rejection meds, partially due to us being a 4 out of 6 HLA type match, so the doctors were hopeful it would last him the rest of his life. It would have lasted far longer if ALS hadn't shown up.

saulpw 2 hours ago

Could you have gotten it back after he passed away? Or was the kidney forwarded on to someone else?

throwawayk7h 2 hours ago

Not sure why your question is being downvoted. I think it would be fascinating to read about a kidney making a journey from son to father to son.

gertop 27 minutes ago

You can't get it back there's nothing to attach it to. There's also no point for the risks involved.

Organs can be transplanted twice but it's very rare and it's usually when the first recipient dies shortly after the transplant. It's called (quite obviously) retransplantation if you want to Google it.

Faaak 2 hours ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is an interesting question to me at least

latchkey 3 hours ago

I was confused at first. Mom donated a kidney to her son and she would have been 100, making the kidney effectively 100.

agumonkey 3 hours ago

thanks for the clarification, still fascinating that the organ could live that long .. what if the son gives the kidney to a teen again ?

bmacho 28 minutes ago

> fascinating that the organ could live that long

All types of organs can live that long, there are 100 years old humans around. Probably many types of organs could live much longer, we don't know that, the humans having them die first.

phibz 3 hours ago

That won't happen. Even though it's still adequate for him it's very likely preforming under what a typical healthy kidney performs at. Long term slow rejection is nearly impossible to eliminate. No kidney transplant is forever and only in truly exceptional cases does it last the lifetime of the recipient.

kittikitti 2 hours ago

And these days, mothers in America will genitally mutilate (circumcise) their sons without a second thought.

throwawayk7h 2 hours ago

I know we're not supposed to feed the trolls here but... dang it I am legitimately intrigued about your usage of "these days" here. Do you believe it's more common now than it used to be? And that it's some sign of recent societal decay?

mock-possum 2 hours ago

Isn’t it ironic