Honoring those who give the gift of life

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For National Donor Day, a columnist shares how organ donation saved her life

Organ donors are ordinary people who make an extraordinary impact. Each day I’m personally reminded of how one decision can change a life. My life was saved because of my donor, who made my double-lung transplant possible five years ago. Each breath I take reminds me of the miraculous gift of organ donation.

For me, National Donor Day on Feb. 14 is a time to remember what I’ve been through and reflect on where I am now. It’s a sobering thought that I would have died without my organ donor. I was in respiratory failure nearly six years ago, and time was running out. The medications had stopped working, and I was getting sicker while in the hospital. The call that saved my life came just at the right time. Read the full story in Cystic Fibrosis News Today.

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New Study Shows QI Efforts Can Help Overcome Kidney Transplant Disparities

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Although Black individuals suffer from kidney failure at a markedly increased rate compared with White individuals in the US, Black patients have reduced access to kidney transplants and are significantly underrepresented on kidney transplant waitlists. New research from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows, however, that reducing structural barriers in access to kidney transplants can reduce inequity in tandem.
Read more from the American College of Surgeons (ACS).

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Pre-liver transplant frailty increases risk for worse global functional health outcomes

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Physical frailty before liver transplant correlated with poor functional status and health-related quality of life 1 year after surgery among patients with cirrhosis, according to research published in JAMA Surgery.

“As the quantity of posttransplant years of life improves, it is crucial to better understand the factors, particularly those that are modifiable, that contribute to patients’ quality of life during those posttransplant years,” Jennifer C. Lai, MD, MBA, associate professor of medicine and endowed professor of liver health and transplantation at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues wrote.  Read more in Healio.

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