Transplant : Twin Sisters Credit Liberalized Soviet Emigration Policy With Giving Ailing One New Chance at Life

Call it physiological perestroika .

For Yelena Faynegold, the Soviet Union’s policy of political restructuring and its easing of emigration restrictions has literally meant a new chance at life.

Her recent move to United States enabled her to undergo a kidney transplant last week, with the help of her identical twin sister, Dina Vaisberg, who donated one of her kidneys.

The surgeries were performed by Drs. Rafael and Robert Mendez, who are also identical twins.

Pair Leave Hospital

On Tuesday, the 34-year-old sisters were discharged from St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Hospital officials said the operations went smoothly and, because of the close organ-match between the two, Faynegold’s outlook for a normal life is excellent.

Relatives of the sisters credit the changes brought about in the Soviet Union under President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

“It was easy to immigrate now,” said Dina’s husband, Alexander.

Having relatives in the United States and being Jewish also helped.

Here for Nine Years

Dina Vaisberg, who now lives in West Hollywood, emigrated nine years ago.

After a year’s wait, Faynegold was allowed to move here five months ago.

If immigration had not been possible, the sisters said, Faynegold’s prognosis would be much bleaker.

Doctors in her hometown of Odessa, on the Black Sea, did not diagnose her kidney disease, Faynegold said in Russian.

It was an American doctor, based on information she provided her relatives in letters, who pinpointed the problem.

Specialist Left Town

When, after much waiting and cajoling, she finally was admitted to a hospital in Moscow, the specialist Faynegold saw left the city the next day.

For two weeks, she recalled, a parade of doctors came by her bed in a crowded and dirty ward--each telling her something different. The hospital’s kidney dialysis machine was 20 years old.

Soviet hospitals also held other privations.

“No TV,” Faynegold said in English. “No bathrooms.”