linguistic:voice_change, structural:summarization, information:extraction, quality:corruption
Domino transplants

In people with cystic fibrosis (CF), where both lungs need to be replaced, it is a technically easier operation with a higher rate of success to replace both the heart and lungs of the recipient with those of the donor. As the recipient's original heart is usually healthy, it can then be transplanted into a second recipient in need of a heart transplant, thus making the person with CF a living heart donor.

In a 2016 case at Stanford Medical Center, a woman who was needing a heart-lung transplant had cystic fibrosis which had led to one lung expanding and the other shrinking, thereby displacing her heart. The second patient who in turn received her heart was a woman with right ventricular dysplasia which had led to a dangerously abnormal rhythm. The dual operations required three surgical teams, including one to remove the heart and lungs from a recently deceased initial donor. The two living recipients did well and had an opportunity to meet six weeks after their simultaneous operations.

Another example of this situation occurs with a special form of liver transplant in which the recipient has familial amyloid polyneuropathy, a disease where the liver slowly produces a protein that damages other organs. The recipient's liver can then be transplanted into an older person for whom the effects of the disease will not necessarily contribute significantly to mortality.

This term also refers to a series of living donor transplants in which one donor donates to the highest recipient on the waiting list and the transplant center utilizes that donation to facilitate multiple transplants. These other transplants are otherwise impossible due to blood type or antibody barriers to transplantation. The " Good Samaritan " kidney is transplanted into one of the other recipients, whose donor in turn donates his or her kidney to an unrelated recipient. This method allows all organ recipients to get a transplant even if their living donor is not a match for them. This further benefits people below any of these recipients on waiting lists, as they move closer to the top of the list for a deceased-donor organ. Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and Northwestern University 's Northwestern Memorial Hospital have received significant attention for pioneering transplants of this kind. In February 2012, the last link in a record 60-person domino chain of 30 kidney transplants was completed.

In May 2023, New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital performed the first domino heart transplantation in a baby, eventually saving two baby girls.