Effective June 29, 2023, new safety net policies will be implemented for kidney-after-heart and kidney-after-lung allocation. The new policies are similar to the safety net provision already in effect for kidney-after-liver allocation.
Safety net priority classification will be available for qualifying heart, lung, or heart-lung recipients who are listed for a kidney transplant within 365 days of their thoracic transplant.
Read more from UNOS.
By Cara Murez, HealthDay Reporter
Many transplant centers routinely practice “list-diving,” when the top candidate among potential organ recipients is skipped in favor of someone further down the list, new research shows.
The top candidate is ranked that way based on an objective algorithm using age, waiting time and other factors, while choosing someone else happens with little oversight or transparency. Read more from U.S. News and World Report.
By Crystal Phend
Transplants from circulatory-death donor hearts assessed with a perfusion machine did just as well as those procured after brain death and cold storage, a randomized trial showed.
Recipients of a circulatory-death heart had noninferior risk-adjusted 6-month survival compared with brain-death heart recipients (94% vs 90%) in the as-treated population, with a 3-percentage point advantage by the least-squares mean difference calculation in the primary endpoint (P<0.001 for noninferiority). Read the full article in MedPage Today.
In a study, undocumented citizenship, unstable housing and uninsured status were common among people who did not get referrals for transplant evaluation.
Among people whose liver is failing, the perpetual shortage of donor organs inhibits expectations of a timely, life-saving transplant. New research suggests that these people who initially seek care at safety-net hospitals may face additional obstacles to being considered for transplant.
A study of three safety-net hospitals showed that, among patients whose measures of liver health would typically result in a referral for transplant evaluation, only about one-fourth received the referral. The finding was published June 8 in JAMA Network Open. Read more from the UW Medicine Newsroom.
By Elaine Chen
Margaret Gamble was supposed to receive a blood test in the mail in May. It’s a regularly scheduled test to check if her kidney — the second she’s received in a transplant — has been damaged in any way.
Her kidney needs to be constantly monitored since it’s vulnerable to infections or, critically, rejection by her immune system. Read the full story in STAT.
By Regina Schaffer and Scott Buzby
In 2020, heart disease remained among the leading causes of death, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have exacerbated preexisting CVD morbidity-related racial and ethnic disparities.
As the initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than 3.3 million overall deaths were registered in the U.S., which exceeded the 2019 figure by more than 500,000 deaths, according to the American Heart Association’s annual Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics update. Read the full story in Healio.
By Natasha Persaud
Despite growing access to kidney transplantation, adults older than 65 years are still less likely than younger patients to be waitlisted and receive a first or second kidney, investigators reported at the 2023 American Transplant Congress in San Diego, California.
Using 1995-2018 data from the US Renal Data System, investigators identified 2,495,031 adult patients on dialysis seeking a first kidney transplant and 110,338 adult recipients seeking a second kidney transplant after their initial graft failed.
Read more in Renal & Urology News.
By Alina Kesl
Albert Pedroza was energetic and active, but one day on a hike with his son, he experienced difficulty breathing. Fighting the inner voice in his head that told him to brush it off, he could think only of his family as he scheduled a doctor’s appointment to get checked out.
When Pedroza was told that he had scarring on his lungs likely caused by a previous case of pneumonia or asbestos exposure, he accepted the fact that he would experience periodic breathing difficulties. Read the full story from University Health.
Study finds that such organs don’t transmit virus that causes COVID-19
By Jim Dryden
Kidneys from organ donors who were diagnosed with COVID-19 are safe to transplant and don’t transmit the virus to people who receive those organs, according to a new study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Of the many thousands of kidneys transplanted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been no reported infections after transplant surgery related to kidneys donated by people who died and had tested positive for the virus. Most donors died of causes other than COVID-19, but even in those who had tested positive for the virus within a week of their deaths, there was no effect on the success of the transplants. Read more from the Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis.
By Erin Wise
Thousands of people in Alabama have kidney failure and many are in need of kidney transplants, but the number of patients greatly outnumber available kidneys. Many have taken to social media to find a living donor.
Annitra McGowan was diagnosed with stage three kidney disease four years ago. Her health declined further after getting COVID-19 in 2021. Read more from ABC 33/40 News.