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Efficient and incentive-compatible liver exchange. (English) Zbl 1466.91207

Summary: Liver exchange has been practiced in small numbers, mainly to overcome blood-type incompatibility between patients and their living donors. A donor can donate either his smaller left lobe or the larger right lobe, although the former option is safer. Despite its elevated risk, right-lobe transplantation is often utilized due to size-compatibility requirement with the patient. We model liver exchange as a market-design problem, focusing on logistically simpler two-way exchanges, and introduce an individually rational, Pareto-efficient, and incentive-compatible mechanism. Construction of this mechanism requires novel technical tools regarding bilateral exchanges under partial-order-induced preferences. Through simulations we show that not only can liver exchange increase the number of transplants by more than 30%, it can also increase the share of the safer left-lobe transplants.

MSC:

91B68 Matching models
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