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This week, 39-year-old Brian Yontz donated a kidney to his 67-year-old father, Rick Yontz, at the Comprehensive Transplant Center of Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center. But the Springfield father and son clearly aren’t the only Yontzes being touched by the Yontz family transplant.

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Manning Stewart is No. 800, though the doctor who performed his surgery doesn’t want anyone calling him that. That’s the number of liver transplants that have taken place at Ohio State University’s Wexner Center since it began transplanting livers in 1984. (No. 800 doesn’t come with a prize, unless you count the liver.) And while 800 is a good number, Dr. Ken Washburn says 1,000 is better. He expects Ohio State to hit that landmark in the next few years. In fact, he has big plans for organ transplants across Wexner Medical Center as well as at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Ohio State’s organ transplant history does have a few bumps. In 2009, the university halted its lung transplant program for four years because it was performing so few of them. Livers suffered as well, said Dr. Elmahdi Elkhammas, the longtime Ohio State liver transplant surgeon who performed Stewart’s operation. This coverage resulted from pitching efforts by OSU Wexner Medical Center Public Affairs and Media Relations.

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Lori Coulter suffers from polycystic kidney disease, a condition that ends in kidney failure and causes a host of other complications. Coulter spent two years on dialysis after her first transplanted kidney failed in April of 2014. Faced with a three- to five- year wait for a new kidney on the National Registry, Coulter turned to Facebook for help. She set up a page called Find a kidney for Lori, and to her surprise a complete stranger came to her rescue. March is National Kidney Month, and fittingly both women will undergo surgery at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center on Tuesday.

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With 154 marathons and three Ironman races under his belt, Dan Leite never thought he would need a heart transplant. But for reasons that remain unclear, Leite's left ventricle began deteriorating, causing him to become pale and inexplicably short of breath at times. He became a transplant candidate, and got lucky: On Christmas Eve, he underwent transplant surgery at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center. His new heart first beat inside him at seven minutes past midnight on Christmas Day. Surgeons notched more than 30,000 transplants nationwide for the first time in 2015, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. The reasons for the 5 percent jump in organ transplants are unclear, though better communication between organ-procurement agencies and hospitals might be a factor, said Dr. David Klassen, the network's chief medical officer. Dr. Todd Pesavento is quoted. Drs. Sylvester Black and Bryan Whitson are featured in a photo. This coverage resulted from pitching efforts by OSU Wexner Medical Center Public Affairs and Media Relations.

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Dan Leite, 51, has always been incredibly active. In addition to serving as the vice chairman on the board for The Columbus Marathon, he has completed 154 marathons and three Iron Man competitions. Four years ago he realized something wasn't right when he was training for a race. After only a few months on the transplant list, he received a life-saving heart transplant at OSU Wexner Medical Center’s Ross Heart Hospital, beginning late Christmas Eve. His new heart took its first beats in the wee hours of Christmas morning - arguably, the best Christmas gift of all. Comprehensive Transplant Team members Drs. Ahmet Kilic, Ayesha Hasan and Sitaremesh Emani are featured. This coverage resulted from pitching efforts by OSU Wexner Medical Center Public Affairs and Media Relations.

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In the halls of the Transplant Unit at OSU Wexner Medical Center two new friends have declared victory. A day of celebration that started months ago with a post on social media. “I put on Facebook ‘I normally would not ask anyone for this, but if anyone can share a spare I’ll be more than happy to take it’,” Melissa Siemer said. At 42, Siemer was out of options. She needed another kidney. Her first transplant came from a relative in 2002 after being diagnosed with IGA, a disorder that keeps the kidney from filtering properly. That kidney failed last June. “At that point in time I was willing to go out on a limb and put it on social media and she answered,” Siemer said. She was Danielle Whitmore. Whitmore found out about the post from her husband who was Facebook friends with Siemer and agreed to be checked as a possible match. “If you can save someone’s life…why not do it,” Whitmore said.

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Liz Bekeleski went through testing to become a living donor and called her employer's benefits program in Columbus early on in the process to ask if donating would be a problem in terms of taking off work from her job at Richland Newhope. But then the benefits company told her the surgery wasn't covered under the Family and Medical Leave Act. A spokesperson from the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center told the News Journal that they could not comment on how different employers address time off for living donors because each employer would handle the case differently, depending on a variety of factors.

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Pat Heffernan received a lifesaving phone call on Nov. 4, 2014. A lung transplant coordinator contacted Heffernan while she was enjoying her morning coffee. "She asked what I was doing. I said I was drinking a cup of coffee. She said, 'Dump it out,' " Heffernan said. Heffernan rushed to the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, where she underwent a lung transplant. She spent 10 days in the hospital and more than five weeks in what she called a "grown-up Ronald McDonald House." OSU had recently reopened its lung program when Heffernan became a patient. Of the OSU patients who receive a lung transplant, 89 percent live at least one year. Sixty percent live four or five years.

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Dr. Todd Pesavento writes: Every 10 minutes, another name goes on the list of Americans waiting for an organ transplant. Currently, the list of patients awaiting a donation is more than 122,000 names long. Most of those patients will have to wait months or even years before finding a donor organ, and unfortunately, some never will. By the end of the day, 22 more people will die while awaiting a donor organ. The problem is, there simply aren't enough donors to meet demand. Most states have tried to bring attention to the issue by giving drivers the opportunity to become donors upon getting or renewing their driver's licenses. In May, the U.S. Senate introduced the Organ Donation Awareness and Promotion Act of 2015, and though it's yet to be voted on, it would fund efforts to further promote organ donation and raise awareness of the ongoing shortage.

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The need for kidney donations is overwhelming. If you are healthy enough and a match, you can make a directed donation, which means one of your two kidneys would go to someone you know. For that, you must be in good overall mental health and free from uncontrolled high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, kidney disease and heart disease. Donors generally are ages 18 to 65. You can also become an altruistic donor, meaning that you donate a kidney that goes to someone on the national transplant list. The Comprehensive Transplant Center at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center is among the largest in the country. Doctors there perform about 200 kidney transplants a year, with about half of those coming from living donors. At OSU, the average wait time for a kidney that comes from a deceased donor is almost 34 months; the average wait time for a transplant from a living donor is less than five months. Dr. Todd Pesavento, interim executive director of the transplant center, said that only in the past decade has the notion of altruistic donors grown. Still, OSU surgeons see fewer than 10 of those donors a year.

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On Easter morning 2014, after a night of vomiting and shortness of breath, Joshua McKinney went to the emergency room at Mount Carmel Grove City. He chalked up his illness to “flulike” symptoms he just couldn’t shake. The then-30-year-old never imagined that, a few hours later, he would be told that his kidneys were failing. He was transferred to the intensive-care unit at the larger Mount Carmel East hospital. “I do remember people talking about a kidney transplant that first day,” said the Worthington resident, 32. Fortunately, by the end of Easter Sunday, he had three people — his two brothers and his mother — offering to provide kidneys. His mother — Debbie, of Orient — said that no one else needed to be tested if she was a donor match. “As the mother, I dictated who got tested first,” Mrs. McKinney said. After a series of tests, she was determined to be a match. After more than a year on dialysis, Joshua McKinney received the lifesaving transplant in July at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

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