First Twin-to-Twin Kidney Transplant at UCI Planned

Surgeons at UCI Medical Center in Orange are scheduled to transplant a kidney from one identical twin to another Thursday morning in the first such procedure at the hospital.

At about 11 a.m., Dr. Ervin Ruzics will remove a kidney from Juan Gutierrez, 25, and rush it to an adjacent operating room where a second doctor will transplant it into Alfredo, Juan’s twin, a hospital spokeswoman said. The brothers live together in Huntington Beach.

A total of 59 kidney or renal transplants have been reported from identical twin donors in the United States, according to the UCLA International Transplant Registry.

On the same morning, Ruzics also will remove a kidney from Ione Kellogg, 51, so that it can be transplanted to her 22-year-old son, Bill, of Anaheim Hills.

Doctors are not sure why Bill Kellogg’s kidneys failed, but Alfredo Gutierrez’s problem stems from an untreated strep throat infection he had as a boy in Mexico, hospital officials said.

The operations will take about 3 1/2 hours each, officials said. Each patient is expected to be released from the hospital six to 10 days after surgery. Because the organs are being transferred from one family member to another, the chances of a successful operation are about 90%, officials said.