WAUSAU (AP) – A Wausau man has become the first patient in the University of Wisconsin transplant program to accept a transplanted kidney from a donor with a different blood type and to overcome antibodies that make organ rejection likely.
The transplant between Chad Stockinger and his wife, Kristin Calhoun Stockinger, was made possible by desensitization, a process that removed those antibodies from Chad’s blood and kept them away with medication.
The UW transplant center is one of about five in the nation to perform the procedure.