More concerns surround Texas transplant programs

KVUE, Austin | ANDY PIERROTTI

AUSTIN -- Rodney Parrish considers himself lucky.

About twenty years ago, both of his kidneys failed. Doctors put him on a transplant waiting list and dialysis to keep him alive. Less than a year later, the husband and father got good news.

“It took less than a year…The fact that I was able to get one so quickly, I mean what can I tell you, as far as my quality of life is concerned, it's immense," Parrish said.

Dr. Charles Andrews helped secure his kidneys as the transplant director for Harris-Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth.

"At one point in the late 1980s, we had the shortest waiting time in the United States for kidney transplants," Andrews said in his Fort Worth office.

Andrews attributes the success to its local transplant program called an ALU, or alternative local unit. Fort Worth is one of six in the state to have the status. It gives patients living in those communities first choice to locally donated kidneys.

"Which meant that all the kidneys procured in Fort Worth, we got first choice in Fort Worth," Andrews said.

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