CBS Evening News: Woman Donates Kidney to Twin Sister

CBS Evening News, CNN.com and Spectrum News 1 recently featured the story of identical twins who now share a kidney, thanks to a lifesaving organ transplant performed by Irene Kim, MD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center.  

Sisters Linda Thomas and Karen Rodman told CBS Evening News that Thomas needed the transplant because multiple myeloma—a rare blood cancer—had caused her kidneys to fail. Rodman immediately offered to be the organ donor.

“I had no doubt she would do this, because if it was the other way around, I would do it for her,” Thomas told CBS Evening News.

Rodman told CNN.com medical tests had revealed that her organs were genetically identical to her sister’s, which is “quite rare.”

Kim, the Esther and Mark Schulman Chair in Surgery and Transplantation Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, told Spectrum News 1 reporter Genevieve Glass that because of the exact match, Thomas would not need to take the antirejection medicines that often are necessary for transplant recipients.

“They are completely identical, and therefore it is like being transplanted with an organ that is from yourself,” Kim said. “And that never happens. That’s like winning the lottery.”

Kim told Glass there is a significant need for more organ donors. According to the American Kidney Fund, of the more than 106,000 people on the national transplant waiting list in the U.S., 87% need a kidney.

“If you are healthy, it is possible to live your whole life with one kidney the rest of your life,” Kim said. “We can’t do transplant without an organ donor, and their gift is so beyond.”

Click here to watch the entire segment from CBS Evening News. Click here to read the complete article from CNN.com. Click here to watch the entire segment from Spectrum News 1.