There are four types of kidney donation:

• Directed — A kidney from a living donor is given to a specific recipient.
• Non-directed — A living donor provides a kidney to a nonspecific recipient.
• Deceased donor — A kidney from an organ donor who has just died.
• Paired donation — A cross-donation between two or more pairs of people where the directed donor and their recipient are not compatible with each other.

If you want to donate to someone who is listed for kidney transplant at California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), follow these steps:

1. Complete the Online Screening Questionnaire. This requires your weight and height, so have that information ready. After you submit the questionnaire, a nurse coordinator will review it; if you are an acceptable donor, we will contact you to schedule a donor evaluation in San Francisco. If you have questions at any time, call (415) 600-1700 and ask to speak with a living donor team member.
2. Undergo a Two-Day Donor Evaluation at CPMC. Next, the Kidney Team schedules you for a full medical workup at CPMC in San Francisco. If more than one donor want to donate to one recipient, our team will help decide which donor should proceed first. The workup includes a medical exam, psychosocial consultation, chest X-ray, EKG (heart test), routine blood and urine tests and blood compatibility testing. We’ll also arrange any other tests that your and your recipient’s case may require. If you live out of state, a local recognized transplant center may complete your workup.
3. Complete Blood Compatibility Workup. We will draw your blood for two levels of compatibility testing: ABO blood typing and crossmatch testing. In addition, we’ll run HLA (genetic) testing. Medical Team Determines Compatibility. Following these tests, we’ll tell you whether you are an appropriate living donor candidate. If testing determines you can donate to your recipient, we will do a final CT scan and arrange a transplant date. If you and your intended recipient are incompatible, we will offer to add your names to our Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) listing. This list helps find sets of donor-recipient pairs who can “swap” kidneys, enabling you to donate to another person while ensuring that your recipient also receives a living donor transplant.

All medical expenses, including the workup and surgery, are covered by the recipient’s health insurance. Potential donors should consider additional costs including travel to the hospital, parking, lodging, gas, bridge tolls and other transportation expenses, as well as lost wages if sick time, vacation time or short-term disability aren’t available. For additional information and resources, please visit the National Living Donor Assistance Center.

Living donors typically spend 2 to 3 days recovering in the hospital. Most can return to their normal level of activity within 4 to 6 weeks.

There’s little risk to the donor outside of the normal risk and pain associated with any surgery.

If you want to donate a kidney but your organ is not compatible with your intended recipient, you can become part of the Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center's Kidney Paired Donation Program. A sophisticated computer program (created by a former Sutter Health kidney transplant patient) takes multiple characteristics of people who need kidneys and people willing to donate a healthy kidney and generates a series of compatible matches or “swaps.” This enables you to donate to another recipient while ensuring that your loved one simultaneously receives a life-giving, living-donor kidney.

Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC), the largest kidney-paired donation program on the West Coast, performed its first kidney paired donor transplant in 2003 and made history in 2011 as the first California transplant program to perform five paired donor transplants in one day. In 2015, an altruistic donor triggered a rare six-way paired kidney donation at CPMC that matched six donors and six recipients in 12 surgeries over two days.

Kidney disease afflicts one in nine people in this country—that’s nearly 100,000 people in San Francisco alone, where the average wait for a kidney transplant is four to six years. Creative approaches like multi-kidney swap are part of Sutter’s commitment to help more people achieve a long, dialysis-free life.