On Wednesday, transplant experts in the United States hailed a kidney chain of 68 persons. According to reports, the 68-person kidney chain is an approach which urgently needed to deal with a growing transplant waiting list.

In the largest exchange to date in the United States, 34 persons donated kidney and 34 received them over a two-month period that began in January. The exchange of kidneys involved more than 25 transplant centers, which include Allegheny General Hospital. According to reports, the hospital recovered organs from two donors and transplanted into two patients.

While talking about the 68-person kidney chain, 76-year-old Dennis Matteucci from North Lima said that the approach surprised him. Matteucci received his kidney on January 6. As per the reports, an exchange participant in Wisconsin donated him the kidney. His wife, Roberta, donated her kidney to another patient in New York.

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) was not part of the largest exchange. The medical center had participated about four year ago in a chain that had involved about 16 donors, 16 recipients and about a dozen transplant centers.

Both exchanges were coordinated by the National Kidney Registry. Since 2008, National Kidney Registry has arranged more than 1,300 transplants. Ngoc Thai, chief of abdominal transplantation at Allegheny General, said, “The exchange is an important development in transplant medicine and one that helps to unite the country around a pressing issue. It’s kind of a bridge. It brings nurses together. It brings doctors together. It brings patients together”.

Garet Hil, founder and CEO of the kidney registry, said that more than 120,000 people in the United States have been waiting for transplants, and about 101,700 need kidneys. According to Hil, the need of kidneys is driven partly by epidemics of diabetes and obesity.