title: Implementation of a User-Friendly, Flexible Expert System for Selecting Optimal Set of Kidney Exchange Combinations of Patients in a Transplantation Center.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  For end-stage renal disease patients, kidney transplantation is the only long-term solution. The number of deceased donors is limited. Living kidney donation is subject to strict regulations, limiting possible donors only to the extended family of the patient for preventing the organ trade. There may be incompatibilities between the patients and their related donors, such as ABO blood type incompatibility, positive cross-match, and so on.
  
  
  METHODS
  Pairwise exchanges between donors and recipients increase both the quality and the quantity of feasible transplantations. The maximum benefit in kidney exchanges could only be yielded by developing a central kidney exchange program supported by a nation wide living donor pool database. In the absence of a central kidney exchange program, each transplantation center arranges the kidney allocations using spreadsheets manually. Selecting best possible combination of exchanges simultaneously is a difficult task when performed manually. It is a proven NP-Hard combinatorial optimization problem. However, using mixed integer programming methods the best combination can be found in seconds.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We developed a user-friendly decision support system that can be used in transplantation centers, facilitating their operations.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The decision support system can be modified for according to the matching preferences of transplantation centers and it can be used as a simulation tool for analyzing different allocation methods.
authors.affiliation: Industrial Engineering Department, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Karademirci
authors.affiliation: Industrial Engineering Department, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey.
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Terzioğlu
authors.affiliation: Industrial Engineering Department, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yılmaz
authors.affiliation: Industrial Engineering Department, Maltepe University, Istanbul, Turkey. Electronic address: tombus@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ö
authors.initials: Ö
authors.lastname: Tombuş
mesh_terms: D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D046148:Donor Selection / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000601:surgery*; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D019520:Living Donors; D009392:Nephrectomy; D018579:Patient Selection; D009927:Tissue and Organ Procurement / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration; D014421:Turkey