Methodist Healthcare
April 09, 2011

The San Antonio Business Journal Health Care Hero Award named Adam Bingaman, M.D., Ph.D., a Health Care Hero as part of its annual recognition of health care professionals in San Antonio. Dr. Bingaman was nominated by Jaime Wesolowski, President and CEO of the Methodist Healthcare System. He will be recognized in a ceremony on Wednesday, May 11, at the McNay Art Museum.

Nomination

It is not unusual for doctors to save lives, but few are doing it on the scale of Adam Bingaman, M.D., Ph.D., transplant surgeon and director of the live donor kidney transplant program at San Antonio’s Texas Transplant Institute at Methodist Specialty and Transplant Hospital (MSTH). In just three short years, Dr. Bingaman has created the nation’s largest living donor kidney transplant program, based on 2009 statistics from the United Network of Organ Sharing, the governmental agency that tracks organ donation and transplantation. Now individuals from all over the country who are in desperate need of kidney transplants – many who have been turned away by other institutions – are finding the gift of life because of Dr. Bingaman’s work.

The paired donor program identifies living donors who wish to donate their kidney but cannot because of blood or tissue incompatibility with a friend or family member in need of a transplant. Incompatible pairs are matched with other incompatible pairs, and the donors are exchanged, resulting in compatible transplant combinations.

Dr. Bingaman’s work has broad national implications. It is estimated that more than 6,000 people currently are on the national kidney transplant waiting list with donors who cannot donate because they are not a match. Typically there is at least a one-third chance that two people will not be a match. If patients have received a previous transplant, had a blood transfusion or been pregnant, their odds of finding a match can be much lower due to the immune system making antibodies in response to exposure to foreign tissues.

Dr. Bingaman has led the transplant team at MSTH in accumulating a database of incompatible pairs with more than 200 recipient candidates and 300 willing kidney donors. This large database and a special emphasis on blood type and antibody matching have been crucial to the success of the program. The emphasis on close matching makes it unnecessary to use high-risk desensitization therapies often used in other programs to enable a transplant between incompatible pairs.

The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2010 published a letter by Dr. Bingaman and other doctors involved the San Antonio program which detailed how they have increased access to living donor kidney transplantation by 34 percent with KPD. The article explained that if this productivity with KPD transplantation could be replicated on a national level it would potentially result in 2,000 additional live donor kidney transplants annually and reduce the number of patients on the waiting list.

Francis Wright, M.D., transplant surgeon and director of organ transplantation at MSTH, describes the exchange program has the single most important advancement in kidney transplantation over the past three decades.

Dr. Bingaman’s work has been especially important for the Hispanic population in San Antonio and South Texas since the prevalence of diabetes among Hispanics often leads to the need for a kidney transplant.

Dr. Bingaman received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1993 and a Doctor of Philosophy from Emory University in 1999.