Alvin E. Roth Quotes

I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.

The risk from viruses is an unanswered question - and it won't be answered until you have had organs transplanted into humans over many years.

I had worked on dogs for a couple of years developing a renal transplant operation. We had dogs running around with kidneys we had transplanted back into themselves.

I had to have a complete liver transplant. I waited with a beeper for a year and 10 months to get that gift.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status. This spectacular success was a clear demonstration that organ transplantation could be life-saving.

Who transplanted sustains

The difficulty of finding organs suitable for transplantation on man must be met.

Five to six thousand people die every year waiting for organs, but nobody cares.

You can put a kidney in your body - and somewhere down the line, your body might reject it.

A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.

I had to have a complete liver transplant.

Post-operatively the transplanted kidney functioned immediately with a dramatic improvement in the patient's renal and cardiopulmonary status.

Kidney transplants seem so routine now. But the first one was like Lindbergh's flight across the ocean.

I moved to Harvard in 1998, and in 2000 the first kidney exchange in the United States was done at a hospital nearby. I started to think, 'Gee, there might be a way where I could help organize it, make it easier for people to find kidneys.'

Removal of an organ is difficult and dangerous. There have been several deaths of healthy donors. I think myself, I would be hesitant to participate as a liver donor. It's a very tricky operation.

This is a year and a few months after the transplant. Before I had it my doctors told me that it would be the biggest thing that I ever had to face and believe me, when they take your liver out of ya and put another one in it's like replacing a football in your stomach.

I recently have had a full hip replacement and a liver transplant, and I'm getting used to the medication.

Don't forget my new kidney is a foreign object. My body attacks it. So I have to take these anti-rejection drugs to stop my body winning.

There is a risk of death associated with donating a piece of liver. It's about one in 500 for the risk of death. The risk of death of donating a kidney is about one in 3000, so this is a riskier operation than donating a kidney. The stakes are usually higher for the recipient of the transplant because unlike kidney failure, where you have a dialysis machine, in liver failure we don't have that kind of machine that allows a patient to survive until they can get a cadaver organ.

A few years ago he had a big heart transplant in Chicago, a five-hour operation. It took the doctors four hours to get him on the operating table.

I've just had an operation, but nothing too serious.

It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.

When a patient does get an organ from another person, it comes from a different body. It has different properties, and a person's natural tendency is to reject that organ.

It is important to note that there are no age limitations on who can donate organs and tissue. Newborns as well as senior citizens have been organ donors.

It was in 2003 that I realised there was no choice but to have dialysis treatment - by the time of the World Cup that year, I could barely walk. A year later, I finally had a kidney transplant.