12 comments

  • 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
  • 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 1 hour ago
          Mothers kidney: 100

          Son: 64

          Son’s transplant of mothers kidney: 48

          Typical kidney transplant lifespan: 15-20

  • d_silin 1 hour 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...

    • etoxin 39 minutes ago
      Yeah, this had me thinking. Does transplanting older organs into younger bodies force the body to rejuvenate the transplanted organ to the recipients age.

      Edit: your article say so, neat.

      • WhyNotHugo 32 minutes ago
        I vaguely recall that it's the blood itself which has a big impact — to the point where blood transplants from younger blood could (temporarily) "rejuvenate" an older metabolism.
    • moffkalast 27 minutes ago
      So in theory you could keep an organ alive perpetually if you kept transplanting it every fifty or so years?
      • ocdtrekkie 0 minutes ago
        Well the average kidney transplant works for 15-20 years... so probably not.
  • mrb 43 minutes ago
    Apparently the oldest transplanted liver in humans is 108 years old: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/transplanted-liver...
  • cfiggers 1 hour ago
    Ok so he needs to also donate it to a third person. Let's see how long we can keep it going!
  • 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?
      • JohnTHaller 1 minute ago
        Kidney transplantation is major surgery with decent risks. Donation carries a certain level of risk as well but less than being a recipient. When I donated, the chance of dying was about 1 in 4,000.

        Since I donated, my remaining kidney has grown larger and taken over a chunk of the function of my missing kidney. If possible, getting it back would only give me a relatively small benefit compared to the risk of the surgery. First, I'd have a spare again for major injuries meaning I'd be 'allowed' to do things like contact sports and such. It's recommended you don't do things that could result in an impact to your kidney when you don't have a spare. I'd also be able to take anti-inflammatory meds without restrictions. That is an annoying one as when I injured my rotator cuff years ago, the normal recommendation was a month of high-dose anti-inflammatory meds. Since I couldn't do that, I had to do physical therapy and injected steroids which was much more involved and more expensive.

        Note that a transplanted kidney can be re-transplanted depending on the health of the recipient when they die. It's not as common but it has been more in recent years. It's often referred to as "regifting".

      • 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.
      • Faaak 2 hours ago
        I don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is an interesting question to me at least
      • gertop 1 hour 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.

  • olalonde 44 minutes ago
    Stupid question but what's a Webster man?
    • actionfromafar 41 minutes ago
      A man living in Webster.

      (Or it can be an arachnid/human hybrid, but it's probably not that.)

    • mc32 36 minutes ago
      These days City + Person means someone living in such city. They don’t say “from + place” because that implies origin which they try to avoid these days.
  • 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 ?
      • 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.
      • bmacho 1 hour 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.

        • agumonkey 39 minutes ago
          I didn't read the article, apologies, but did they say the kidney was under-performing ? my comment above is badly trying to say "it's 100 and about to go much further"
  • elchief 1 hour 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

  • formvoltron 22 minutes ago
    so cool. looking forward to organ replacement grown from stem cells.
  • zorobo 1 hour 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 1 hour ago
      Yeah Putin was heard talking / bragging to Xi about it not so long ago, if I remember correctly.
  • kittikitti 2 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • 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?
      • whatshisface 50 minutes ago
        He's just on HN while he waits for the build (of the pyramids).
    • mock-possum 2 hours ago
      Isn’t it ironic