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Waitlist Eligibility and Disparities in Transplant Access

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By Adrian Whelan
There are over 138,000 patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the United States, as the demand for kidney transplants continues to greatly exceed the number of organs available for transplantation. This limits the number of patients who can benefit from the improvements in quality of life and survival offered by kidney transplantation. Ensuring equitable access to such a limited supply of organs is a major priority of the transplant community, including the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) which oversees policy development for organ allocation in the United States. Indeed, the OPTN includes providing equity in access to transplants as one of its  four key goals in its strategic plan. Read this full article in the AJKD Blog.

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Transplanted Livers Can Survive Past 100

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These organs that live for more than a century could raise the age of potential donors, perhaps shortening waits for the life-saving procedure

Your liver could outlive you—even into the triple-digits, new research suggests.

Using the United Network for Organ Sharing’s organ transplant database, scientists assessed the ages of 253,406 livers transplanted between 1990 and 2022. Their analysis revealed that 25 of them had survived for more than 100 years.  Read the full article in Smithsonian Magazine.

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COPD raises risk for type 2 myocardial infarction-related hospitalizations, worse outcomes

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — People with COPD have a greater risk for type 2 myocardial infarction-related admissions and worse in-hospital outcomes, researchers reported at the CHEST Annual Meeting.

“Type 2 myocardial infarction occurs due to a mismatch in myocardial oxygen supply and demand. COPD is known to cause increased myocardial oxygen supply and demand mismatch. However, the extent of that mismatch is not clearly delineated,” Brian Brereton, MBBS, clinical fellow in internal medicine at Jersey General Hospital, United Kingdom, told Healio. Read the article in Healio.

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Addition of sleep metric in updated Life’s Essential 8 predicts CVD incidence

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The incorporation of sleep as a CV health metric, as recently done with the American Heart Association’s updated Life’s Essential 8 risk calculator, may enhance CVD primordial and primary prevention efforts, data show.

“In our study, even a CV health score that includes only sleep duration, the most widely measured aspect of sleep health and the most feasible measure to obtain in a clinic or public health setting, predicted CVD incidence,” Nour Makarem, PhD, MS, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, said in a press release. Read more in Healio.

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After 80 Days in the Hospital with Covid-19, Patient Returns to Thank Caregivers

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October 19, 2022 – Sue Ford

When Cory Yager was hospitalized with a severe case of Covid last year, he promised himself he would not give up. His care team had no intentions of giving up, either.

The 43-year-old father from Lewis County, north of Syracuse in the Adirondacks, spent nearly 80 days at Albany Medical Center, kept alive by extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), prior to receiving a double lung transplant. Read the story from Albany MED Health System.

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Delirium after kidney transplantation increases risk of dementia, cognitive decline

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Patients who experience delirium after a kidney transplantation are at an increased risk for dementia and cognitive decline, according to data published in the American Journal of Transplantation.

“While there have been studies of the cognitive sequelae of delirium in other surgical populations, kidney transplantation (KT) is a unique surgery in which the restoration of kidney function improves cognition on average,” Mara A. McAdams-DeMarco, PhD, an associate professor of surgery and population health at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, told Healio. Read the full story in Healio.

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Racial Bias May Impact Access to Heart Transplants

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Oct. 20, 2022 – A new study shows that life-saving heart procedures were performed on white adults twice as often as on Black adults, causing researchers to suspect racial bias among clinical decision-makers.

“The lives disabled or lost are simply too many,” Wendy C. Taddei-Peters, PhD, a study author, said in a news release from the National Institutes of Health. Read more in Web MD.

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11 things to know about heart transplants (from a team that has performed 500 of them)

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The Nebraska Medicine heart transplant team is celebrating their 500th heart transplant. And wow, are their hearts full.

“Performing 500 transplants gives a second chance at life for so many people,” says Brian Lowes, MD, PhD. Dr. Lowes specializes in advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. He credits the exciting milestone to the team’s advanced expertise. “We’re using the next generation of technology here. And our surgeons are going farther and farther to get more organs ready for transplant.” Read the full article from Nebraska Medicine.

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Young patient celebrates new organ amid LLUH transplant milestones

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Loma Linda University Health’s transplant team last month broke its own record with a marathon of eight transplants completed in 72 hours. The marathon, coincidentally, also marked two significant milestones for the team: 1,000 living donor transplants and 4,000 total kidney transplants. Transplant surgeon Charles Bratton, MD, says the dedication and sense of purpose from the transplant team have allowed them to successfully transform thousands of lives, including the Coyt family. Read this story from Loma Linda University Health.

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