APPLICABILITY OF DOMINANT MATCHINGS FOR A DONOR EXCHANGE SYSTEM ON ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION

Abstract

Organ transplantation is a medical treatment aimed at life-saving of a patient for whom the only alternative is to replace the damaged organ with a healthy one. It is the last resort for life-saving. Thus, to increase the number of transplants implies that many patients escape their death. Even if there is a willing donor who donates an organ, transplantation may not be possible due to medical restrictions and social restrictions. One of the methods to overcome the social restrictions is donor exchange transplantation, which several countries have introduced as a system. The paired exchange, i.e., two pairs exchange their donors can be represented by matchings in non-bipartite graphs. According to the aims to increase the number of transplants, popular matchings, which capture global stability and have more elements than in stable matchings, gives one solution for paired exchanges. This paper focuses on a dominant matching which maximizes the elements of matchings among popular matchings. A heuristic algorithm finding a dominant matching is proposed. By using this method, a donor exchange for lung transplantations is simulated to evaluate the applicability of dominant matchings.