Living Donation Types

Positive Crossmatch

Positive crossmatch donation involves a living donor and a transplant candidate who are incompatible because antibodies(a protein substance) in the candidate will immediately react against the donor’s cells, causing loss of the transplant. Specialized medical treatment is provided to the candidate to prevent rejection.

Cross matching is a very sensitive, multi-phase test performed on a living donor and a transplant candidate. The positive crossmatch testing process is similar to the process used for ABO-incompatible living donor kidney transplants, where patients can receive kidneys from living donors with blood types incompatible with their own.

Surgeons will usually only perform positive crossmatch live donor kidney transplants if no other live donors (with a negative crossmatch) exist.

Reference and Publication Information

United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is committed to providing accurate and reliable information for transplant patients. The content on this page was originally created on February 25, 2005 by UNOS and last modified on August 23, 2011.

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