Every day there are more than one thousand people around Pittsburgh who are waiting for an organ transplant, either kidney or liver.
Dr. Amit Tevar is the Surgical Director for UPMC's Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program. Between performing life-saving transplant surgeries, he was able to take a few minutes to chat about the work they're doing and how every living donor is literally saving someone else's life.
Watch the video on this page to see our discussion.
Dr. Tevar says, "Our list at the University of Pittsburgh is one-thousand deep and without a live donor, your wait time is roughly five to six years."
Through Get Marty we've been able to get the word out and drive hundreds of people to sign up to be living donors. At least three people we know of have received kidneys and get back to living normal lives.
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Here's how you can do it too:
Visit UPMC Living Donor Registry and fill in the online form:
Fill out the form, and once you submit the form you can expect someone from UPMC will be reaching out with next steps.
Who Can Be A Living Donor? (From UPMC.com)
Living donors can be family members, friends, or even a stranger who is willing to help. A patient on the transplant list and their potential living donor don’t even need to have the same blood type.
To be a living donor, you need to be physically and mentally healthy, with no history of illnesses involving any major organs, as this could complicate surgery. To be a living-kidney donor, you need to be between the ages of 18 and 75.
If you have questions you can reach out to the experts at UPMC Transplant Services: 833-398-0285 (Mon-Fri 8a-5p)