AlloCare – Page 8

July 30, 2021August 16, 2022

Liver Transplants: ‘Collateral Damage’ of Pandemic Drinking

“The number of alcoholic hepatitis patients getting liver transplant more than tripled during the COVID-19 pandemic, a retrospective study found.

A difference-in-difference analysis from June 2020 to February 2021 found that liver transplants for acute alcohol-associated hepatitis more than tripled (268.5% increase) compared with expected trends, while the rate of patients with acute alcohol-associated hepatitis added to the transplant waiting list more than quadrupled (325% increase), reported Therese Bittermann, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues.”

Read full article, here.

July 29, 2021August 16, 2022

SGLT2 Inhibitor Adds Years of Life to Patients With Heart Failure

“Patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) may increase their lifespan if they take the SGLT2 inhibitor dapagliflozin (Farxiga) over the long term, a statistical modeling study showed.

Mean event-free survival was an estimated 8.3 years in a patient with HFrEF who started dapagliflozin at age 65. As a similar patient on standard therapy alone would only be expected to live free from heart failure events for another 6.2 years, this represented an event-free survival time gain of 2.1 years (P=0.002).”

Learn more, here.

July 29, 2021August 16, 2022

If You’ve Done This, Your Risk of COVID After Vaccination Is 82 Times Higher

“A study published July 23 in the Transplantation journal looked at COVID infections among transplant recipients. The researches analyzed data from more than 18,000 fully vaccinated people who had transplants for large organs from 17 transplant centers across the U.S. There were 151 breakthrough infections among the patients studied. According to the researchers, the risk of getting COVID after vaccination is 82 times higher for people who have had a transplant.

Out of the transplant breakthrough infections, 87 people were also hospitalized and 14 died. According to the study, this translates to a 485 times higher risk of breakthrough infection with associated hospitalization and death for transplant recipients. Per the CDC, most people who get breakthrough infections should not expect severe complications.

Study co-author Dorry Segev, MD, a transplant surgeon with Johns Hopkins University, told Science magazine that this is the first study to provide clinical evidence across multiple hospitals that transplant recipients are less protected by the vaccine.”

Read the full article, here.

July 28, 2021July 28, 2021

CDC Urges Vaccinated People To Mask Up Indoors In Places With High Virus Transmission

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its guidance on wearing masks Tuesday. In a reversal of its earlier position, the agency is now recommending that some fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors if they live in areas with significant or high spread.

Currently, much of the country falls into that category — with the exception of the Northeast and parts of the Upper Midwest. The CDC provides this link if you want to see the area of spread in the county where you live.

“This was not a decision that was taken lightly,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, acknowledging that people are “tired and frustrated.”

But Walensky pointed to new data showing that while vaccinated people still account for a small amount of risk, in rare cases they can get infected and spread the virus to others.”

Organ Transplant and Skin Cancer Risk

What Patients Need to Know

“Organ transplant patients are at a higher risk — up to a 100-fold higher — for developing skin cancer compared to the general population. Transplant patients tend to develop a skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma and Kaposi sarcoma. Many patients also develop a skin cancer called basal cell carcinoma and melanoma.

This higher risk is caused by immunosuppressive medications, which are essential to transplant patients to prevent graft rejection and optimize graft survival. Because these medications suppress the immune system that fights off infection and prevents the development of cancer, transplant recipients are at elevated risk for infection and certain cancers.”

Learn more information, here.

July 27, 2021August 16, 2022

Here’s Who Made This Year’s List of Top Hospitals

— Top hospitals for 15 specialties, including cancer, cardiology, and orthopedics, also ranked

Cardiology & Heart Surgery

1. Cleveland Clinic

2. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota

3. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles

4. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and Cornell

5. NYU Langone Hospitals, New York

6. Mount Sinai Hospital, New York

7. Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston

8. Stanford Health Care-Stanford Hospital, Palo Alto, California

9. UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles

10. Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston

Read full article and see final list, here.

July 27, 2021August 16, 2022

Minnesota man’s kidney donation to a stranger helped national registry hit a milestone

“A Minnesota man who donated a kidney to save another person’s life also set a record in the process.

Ben Rengstrof is a high school teacher with a mission, which started with a lesson learned after his father received a lung transplant two years ago.

“A kidney donation really isn’t that invasive of a surgery,” said Rengstrof. “And so I decided I had to do it.”

With the kidney donation, Rengstrof became an altruistic donor. He didn’t know the person receiving his kidney. He also didn’t know that he was making history.”

Read full story, here.

July 26, 2021July 23, 2021

Making allocation more fair and flexible

“The organ donation and transplantation system in the U.S. has never worked better than it does today. Deceased donor transplants have increased for 10 consecutive years, and 26% more organ transplants are performed today than five years ago. But every day, we work to continuously improve and make the system even more effective and efficient to serve all of the patients waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

As part of these efforts, the organ donation and transplant community is working together to introduce a more fair and flexible approach to allocating donated organs to get the right organ to the right patient at the right time. Our policies have always been data-driven, but this new approach applies advanced analytic techniques to create an algorithm that makes every factor in the match run comparable.

Called continuous distribution, this new framework moves organ allocation from placing and considering patients by classifications to considering multiple factors all at once using an overall score. Doing so will dissolve hard boundaries that exist in the current, category-based system and ensure that no single factor determines a patient’s priority on the waiting list.

Commentary: Critical Elements for a Bright Future in Renal Replacement Therapy

“Let’s start with a simple, tragic fact. Kidney failure affects far too many people. For the vast majority of human history, this meant a steady, irreversible buildup of fluids and toxins leading to an inevitable death. This is no longer the case today. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of scientists over the past 150+ years, millions of people worldwide are able to continue living with regular dialysis, and others—though far too few—receive transplants.

The story of how we’ve been able to get here, and the inflection point that the kidney disease care paradigm finds itself in today, is a testament not only to the innate desire within us to heal and alleviate suffering, but to the critical elements of curiosity, ingenuity and perseverance that are once again needed today, to recalibrate in a patient-focused way.”

Read full article, here.

July 25, 2021August 16, 2022

New Generation Artificial Heart Implanted in Patient at Duke – First in U.S.

“A surgical team at Duke University Hospital, led by Drs. Jacob Schroder and Carmelo Milano, successfully implanted a new-generation artificial heart in a 39-year-old man with heart failure, becoming the first center in North America to perform the procedure.

The artificial heart was developed by CARMAT and has been studied in Europe, where it is approved for use. Last year, the company received FDA approval to begin studies in the U.S. to potentially enroll 10 patients with end-stage biventricular heart failure. The study will evaluate whether the artificial heart is a viable option as a life-saving step before transplant.”