Sacred Heart kidney transplants reach record numbers

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center has performed more kidney transplants this year than any other year since the program opened.

The record was broken last week when surgeons completed the 76th kidney transplant the hospital – breaking a record set in 2002.

Transplant program director Okechukwu Ojogho said the boost in transplants has come from a recent increase in willingness for the Spokane community to donate.

“We’re very fortunate for people in our community who are willing to donate their organs to really help other people live,” Ojogho said.

That increase in kidney donations is not isolated to Spokane, according to National Institutes of Health data. Between 2005 and 2017 kidney donations fell rapidly, driven by a decrease in biologically related live kidney donors. That trend started to reverse in the late 2010s but stalled in the first few years of the pandemic. Recent years have again seen an overall increase in kidney donors.

Approximately 48,000 kidney transplants occurred in 2017 across the United States. That is a 23% increase over the past five years. According to the NIH, this increase comes from a greater willingness of a live donor being willing to donate their kidney to someone they are not biologically related to.

That trend from the early 2000s can also be seen in Spokane. Kidney transplants peaked in 2002 at 75, then fell to a low of 33 in 2020 before increasing again in 2024 and breaking the record this year.

“Achieving this record is a direct result of the extraordinary skill and commitment of our transplant team,” said Dr. Dan Getz, Providence chief medical officer.

According to Ojogho, approximately 70% of transplants done at the hospital come from kidney donors who are deceased. He hopes more Spokanites consider becoming living donors.

“There are many reasons a living donor is better if you are blessed with that. The living donor lasts longer. And part of the reason why that’s the case is that the deceased donor may have suffered some changes that could have impacted the overall life expectancy of the kidney,” Ojogho said.

He recommends everyone get regular checkups to ensure proper kidney function.

“A lot of people who end up having a kidney failure that ultimately requires transplant do not even know they are in kidney failure until it’s too late. Our advice for everyone is to get routine checkup every now and then just to make sure,” he said.

Last year local resident Gail Moon donated her kidney to her daughter.

“She’s my daughter. I didn’t even consider not giving her my kidney,” Moon said. “I guess there really was no hesitation. It just was something that I was immediately willing to do.”

Her daughter, Reagan Fuchs, had struggled with kidney function since high school after several kidney infections. Now in her mid-20s Fuchs learned she needed a transplant soon after giving birth to her son. She started dialysis while attending nursing school and caring for her child. She did not let her kidney failure slow her down.

“Up until dialysis I worked 30 to 40 hours a week. Two weeks after starting dialysis my husband and I took our son to Disneyland. We did not slow down,” Fuchs said.

Dialysis is a medical procedure that removes waste from a person’s blood – a process usually done by the kidney. The procedure takes hours and is done several times a week up to daily. It is extremely fatiguing and often makes it difficult for someone on dialysis to complete routine tasks.

Since surgery last October, neither mother nor daughter have had any complications. Moon said she is proud of her daughter for not letting her failing kidneys halt her life in any way.

“It never really changed her mentally. She still conquered the things that she had to do. She still worked. She still went to school. She got married. They ended up having a little baby,” Moon said.