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Heart failure, then a transplant – for both dad and college-athlete son

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By Deborah Lynn Blumberg, American Heart Association News

When Ryan Scoble was a junior lacrosse player at Mercyhurst University, he came home to Cincinnati for winter break eager to see his father.

Ryan’s dad, Steve, had dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the heart muscle becomes weakened, then enlarged. Steve had surgery to implant a machine called a left ventricular assist device, or LVAD; it essentially does the work of the left side of the heart. He was waiting for a heart transplant. And he was recovering from a stroke. Read the full story from the American Heart Association.

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Pain ‘exceedingly common’ among patients with cirrhosis before liver transplant

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By Robert Stott

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Pain was reported in nearly 80% of patients with cirrhosis evaluated for liver transplant and, when paired with anxiety and depression, was a significant driver for poor quality of life, noted a presenter here.

“In my clinical work, I have always found it challenging to manage pain in patients with cirrhosis,” Jessica B. Rubin, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at University of California, San Francisco, told Healio.
Read the full story in Healio.

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Pre-transplant, atrial fibrillation more likely in patients on hemodialysis

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By Shawn M. Carter

Patients who receive hemodialysis prior to their first kidney transplant may be more likely to develop atrial fibrillation compared with patients who have peritoneal dialysis, according to recent data.

“Individuals with kidney failure receiving dialysis are at particularly high risk of [atrial fibrillation] AF, where as many as one in three patients receiving hemodialysis had an episode of AF during 6 months of rhythm monitoring using loop recorder devices,” Leonardo Pozo Garcia, MD, from the section of nephrology in the department of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, wrote with colleagues. Read the full story in Healio.

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Chronic Kidney Disease Podcast

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When Is It Time to Talk About Kidney Transplantation?

By Matthew A. Sparks, MD; Samira S. Farouk, MD, MSCR

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Matthew A. Sparks, MD: I’m Dr Matthew Sparks. Welcome to Medscape’s InDiscussion series on chronic kidney disease. Today we’ll be discussing kidney transplantation with my guest, Dr Samira Farouk. Dr Farouk is an associate professor of medicine and medical education and a transplant nephrologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is also the associate program director of the fellowship program. Check out the complete podcast in Medscape.

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How New Advances in Organ Transplants Are Saving Lives

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Advances are increasing the supply of organs. But this isn’t enough. Enter the genetically modified donor pig

By Tanya Lewis

Robert Montgomery walked deliberately down the hospital hallway carrying a stainless-steel bowl containing a living human kidney resting on a bed of ice. Minutes earlier the organ had been in one man’s body. It was about to be implanted into another man to keep him alive.

It was about 11 A.M. on a Monday this past spring. I followed Montgomery, an abdominal transplant surgeon and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, into an operating room where 49-year-old John Primavera was waiting to receive the precious kidney.
Read the full article in Scientific American.

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‘Grateful to be alive:’ Man continues to heal one month after pig heart transplant

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By Eric Lagatta

As he works hard to recover, Lawrence Faucette maintains his dream of soon returning home one month after he became the second person to receive the transplanted heart of a pig.

Though highly-experimental, the procedure was seemingly the 58-year-old man’s last hope to extend his life after health problems made him ineligible for a traditional heart transplant. But so far, his doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine say Faucette’s new heart is functioning well and showing no signs of rejection. Read the full story in USA Today.

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Exploring Mayo Clinic’s AI Efforts to Enhance Organ Transplants

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Mayo Clinic experts share how the health system is researching and developing artificial intelligence tools to improve organ transplant outcomes.

Organ transplants represent one of many revolutionary advancements within the field of medicine over the past century. Since the first successful human kidney transplant in 1954, the number of treatment options for once life-threatening or incurable conditions, like kidney disease, has broadened significantly.

Organ transplant-related innovations like tissue typing, genomic sequencing, and antirejection drugs have helped spur progress in this area. But, in the future, clinicians may leverage more advanced approaches to improve patient outcomes. Read more in Health IT Analytics.

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‘Truth in transplant’: Gratitude and suffering coexist after ‘the miracle’

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Quality of life after lung transplant shouldn’t be a taboo topic

By Christie Patient

Amy Silverstein’s second memoir, “My Glory Was I Had Such Friends” (2017), left a lasting impression on me. It wasn’t just because of the way Silverstein’s devoted friends attended to her while she awaited a second heart transplant, or even how that story mirrored my mom’s lung transplant story. It was the impact of one thing that many transplant stories lack: the whole, and sometimes ugly, truth. Read the complete article in Pulmonary Fibrosis News.

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With limited funding, researchers move forward on bioartificial kidneys, xenotransplants

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By Mark E. Neumann

In a recent editorial, Beatrice Concepcion, MD, wrote despite some challenges, transplantation “remains the treatment of choice for most patients with advanced kidney disease,” offering a better quality of life compared with dialysis.

Administrators of the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease Program see kidney transplants as more cost effective compared with dialysis and encourage the option through demonstrations that are part of the Advancing American Kidney Health initiative.
Read the full article in Healio.

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