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Infections and Kidney Transplant Patients: What to Know

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Undergoing any surgery puts you at greater risk for infection. But with kidney transplants, you are often at even higher risk of infection from a range of viruses and bacteria, known as pathogens, because the medications you take afterward affect your immune system.

“Medications suppress your immune system so you will not reject the new kidney,” says Nikhil Agrawal, MD, a nephrologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “This makes it harder for your body to fight off a viral or bacterial infection.”
Read the full story on CareDx.com.

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Favorable survival outcomes among COVID-19 lung transplant recipients

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A recent The Annals of Thoracic Surgery journal study reports that the survival rate of lung transplant (LT) recipients who experienced respiratory failure following infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was not significantly different than the survival rates among patients who received an LT due to other lung etiologies. Read more in News Medical Life Sciences.

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A new heart brings new hope

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Sethan Wilder’s cardiovascular issues began early in life and continued for many years until a heart transplant was his only option.

When Sethan Wilder heard the heart he had been waiting for was available, the range of emotions he’d been feeling in the months prior seemed to all come back at once.

“Not just the news that I was in need of a heart transplant, but that I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to have a heart transplant,” the 28-year-old said. “I can’t say the news made me happy or sad necessarily, if anything it made me eager to take on this new challenge and all that comes with it. Read the full story in Michigan Health.

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Kidney Transplants Prolong Survival Regardless of Age

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Transplant-eligible patients with kidney failure should not be denied a kidney transplant based on their age, according to investigators in Austria.

They based that conclusion on a study of 4445 patients on a kidney transplant waiting list for their first single-organ deceased-donor kidney. Of these, 3621 (81.5%) received a kidney transplant and 1392 (31.3%) died. Read more in Renal & Urology News.

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More than half of hospitalized patients with heart failure have sleep apnea

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More than half of hospitalized adults with HF have obstructive sleep apnea or central sleep apnea, with male sex, higher BMI, higher heart rate and more comorbidities predicting sleep-disordered breathing, researchers reported.

“Considering the frequent co‐occurrence of sleep-disordered breathing in HF and its adverse prognosis, early diagnosis and treatment of sleep-disordered breathing may be beneficial,” Jian Zhang, MD, PhD, FACC, FESC, director of the Heart Failure Center at Fuwai Hospital in Beijing, and colleagues wrote in Clinical Cardiology. Read more in Healio.

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I Won’t Be Tossing My Mask Any Time Soon

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— Hospital masking is about more than just us healthcare workers

During a television interview on September 18, everyone heard President Biden say “the pandemic is over.” Healthcare workers want this to be true as much as anyone else, but is it?

After 2 and a half years, we have certainly come a long way. First, we learned about how to best care for patients with COVID-19. Then, we developed multiple therapeutics to treat the infection. And perhaps most importantly, we have administered more than 12 billion COVID-19 vaccinations worldwide to prevent serious disease and death.
Read more in MedPage Today.

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Opinion: Seven years after getting a heart transplant, I competed in the Transplant Games

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The games are really not about medals. They are about finding your tribe as a transplant recipient or living donor.

Calvet, Ph.D., is the CEO of Blue Tiger, vice president of Team Southern California on the Transplant Games of America board and author of “My Life in Stitches — Everything You Wanted to Know About Transplant But Were Afraid to Ask,” coming out in 2023. She lives in San Diego.

When Jeff Traegeser, interim president of the San Diego nonprofit Lifesharing, stood before the Transplant Games of America crowd during the opening ceremony at the San Diego Convention Center on July 29, he eloquently shared his thoughts. Read more in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Kidney Transplant Provides Greater Benefit Than Long-Term Dialysis for Patients With Kidney Failure

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Although survival benefits for patients who received a kidney transplant varied, the benefits of kidney transplants were greater for all patients when compared with long-term dialysis.

All patients who are eligible for a kidney transplant should be able to participate in a transplant program because receiving a kidney transplant was demonstrated to be associated with increased survival compared to long-term dialysis, according to the authors of a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. The study is considered a pioneer in quantifying survival benefit through the use of restricted mean survival time (RMST). Read the full story in Pharmacy Times.

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Are Heart Transplantation Outcomes Worse After the New OPTN Policy?

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In 2016, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), which is administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), approved a new heart allocation policy that went into effect October 18, 2018. The revised policy reflected the need to reassess prioritization of heart transplantation candidates and eliminate geographic disparities in access. It was designed to equitably allocate donor hearts to patients with the highest risk for mortality across geographic regions and increase the transplantation rate.  Read this editorial collaboration from MedScape and American College of Cardiology.

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