In a breakthrough in liver transplantation that may lead to the ability to connect more living donors and patients, a new matching system designed by a team led by Boston College economists enabled the world’s first four-way liver exchange and a cascade of additional matches, researchers reported recently in the American Journal of Transplantation.

The results show that expanding the capacity of the donor-patient matching mechanism beyond the traditional 2-way change – matching two patients with two donors – can increase the number of transplants that can be matched among a larger group of participants, according to the study, co-authored by BC Professors of Economics Tayfun Sönmez and M. Utku Ünver.

Specifically, in 2022 the liver paired exchange (LPE) facilitated one four-way exchange and four two-way exchanges for a total of 12 living donor liver transplants (LDLT) performed at the Liver Transplant Institute at Malatya Inonu University, in Turkey.

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