Tom Farino of North Huntingdon is eight months into what could be a seven-year wait for a kidney transplant.

A transplant would give Farino, 72, a new lease on life.

“They’re trying to find a living donor before I need dialysis,” Farino said.

Farino said his doctor at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh wants him to get a kidney from a living donor because the recovery is better at his age.

“I tell everybody you have to find a living donor. It’s a better quality and lasts longer,” said Dr. Jennifer Carpenter, a transplant surgeon and surgical director of the living kidney donor program at Allegheny General.

“It (kidney from live donor) works longer, it works better and faster,” said Dr. Amit Tevar, surgical director of UPMC’s kidney and pancreas transplant program.

The fifth annual PA Donor Day on Aug. 1 helped to shine the spotlight on the need for organ and tissue donors for Farino and thousands of other Pennsylvanians. The day is part of an initiative to support organ and tissue donations and encourage family, friends, neighbors and colleagues to register as organ donors.

Farino has been on the transplant list since Dec. 28, which is when doctors determined that the rate of kidney filtration of wastes in the body had dropped to dangerously low levels after falling in April, May and June. He has had chronic kidney disease since 2014, a problem that arose following surgery for thyroid cancer.

In order to spread the word that he needs a new kidney, Farino’s daughter-in-law is using 21 digital billboards along highways in Allegheny, Butler and Lawrence counties. His siblings are too old and his son can’t donate, Farino said. His best friend offered to donate his kidney, but kidney stones prevented that from occurring.

“He’s on many prayer lists. We’re desperately in need of a donor with an “O” blood type,” said his wife, Sharon.

“The first thing I’m going to do is getting a steak and red potatoes,” said Farino, whose diet has restricted him from eating those foods he likes.

Farino is a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy. He is a retired mechanical repairman for Latrobe Specialty Metals Plant.

For now, he continues to watch his diet and get frequent blood tests that monitor his kidney function.

“I’m hoping somebody is a match. I’m in God’s hands,” said Farino, whose personal information about his story and donor information on the Natioonal Kidney Registray can be found at nkr.org/VSS873.

Waiting list

Farino has a lot of company on the kidney waiting list in the Pittsburgh area — about 210 at Allegheny General Hospital and 645 at UPMC, part of the 5,810 Pennsylvanians awaiting a new kidney as of July 31, according to the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network website. Nine children are on the kidney transplant waiting list at UPMC Children’s Hospital.

The problem for those on a five-year waiting list whose kidney function is so poor they must undergo dialysis treatment — a process that could take four hours a day for multiple days of the week to remove impurities from the blood — is that “they’re not likely to make it that long,” Carpenter said.

Nationwide, around 20 people die every day waiting for a kidney transplant, Carpenter said.

Undergoing dialysis for kidney function creates heart problems for patients, depositing plaque in the vessels in the heart, thus increasing the likelihood of a heart attack, Carpenter said.

The good news for those on the kidney transplant waiting list is that “more and more kidneys are becoming available,” said Katelyn Metz, a spokeswoman for the federally designated non-profit Center for Organ Recovery and Education in O’Hara. That CORE regional office serves seven transplant centers in Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Allegheny General’s kidney transplant rates in 2023 jumped by 37% because of living donors. Of the 30 transplants conducted in the first four months of the year, 18 were from living donors, Carpenter said.

There is a “big uptick in live (donations) in the country … 5,000 to 6,000,” Tevar said.

And the surgery for the donor can be done lapriscopically with an incision that is little more than 2½-inches long, Tevar said.

“We protect the live donors to make sure that they will do well the rest of their lives. We want to make sure they can do everything that they did before (the operation). It is a safe operation,” Tevar said of the procedure on the donor.

The donor is left with a high-functioning kidney, Carpenter said. The remaining kidney works so well that donors lose only 30% of their kidney function, she noted.

And if a donor is not a perfect match for someone on a waiting list in Pittsburgh, that potential donor may be suitable for someone in another region and they become a “paired donor,” where someone waiting in Pittsburgh gets a kidney from elsewhere, the doctors said.

When a kidney does become available, everything is taken into consideration when deciding who does get the organ, said Metz, a spokeswoman for one of the 57 federally designated organ procurement organizations.

“It is on a case-by-case basis. There are so many factors,” Metz said.

Allegheny General Hospital did 206 kidney transplants last year and UPMC did 697 kidney transplants, according to Metz.

And most of those kidneys came from deceased donors, Metz said. Of the 1,101 kidney transplantations in Pennsylvania hospitals in 2023, 724 kidneys came from deceased donors and 379 were from living donors, Metz said.

Living donor recipient

For Ryan Neve of South Fayette, the wait for a kidney from a living donor ended on Jan. 5, 2023, 18 months after being diagnosed with liver failure.

Neve’s slide from being a healthy person to needing a kidney transplant came fast and furious in April 2021.

“It happened very quickly. Within two weeks, I could not walk up three stairs,” said Neve, who led an active life.

He went for medical treatment, figuring he had heart problems. Tests proved otherwise.

“I was kind of shocked when they said it was my kidneys. I was floored,” Neve said. His kidney function would fall to 4%, essentially end stage renal failure.

Kidney dialysis was a drain — three days a week, four hours each time, hooked up to the dialysis machine that remove impurities from his body.

“Luckily, my body held up,” Neve said, because fluid tends to build up around the heart and puts stress on the heart.

His search for a match was successful because his daughter, Danielle, then 10 years old, created a video on the TikTok social media platform that went viral among her 112,000 followers. A woman in Cleveland saw it, got tested and was a match for his “O” blood type.

His learned in September 2022 that he would receive a kidney, but some health problems that arose delayed the surgery. The kidney was planted into the body in a bypass procedure in which the nonfunctioning kidney is left intact, Neve said.

There were some complications post-transplant that required him to return to the hospital for treatment, Neve said. He was doing physical light activity within a year.

Twenty months later, “I’m doing great. I’m looking to be back to myself. I was told it takes two years,” Neve said.

“I’m blessed to be alive. I just can’t express enough the selflessness at saving a life,” by being an organ donor, Neve said.

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