By Isabella Hornick
Since its first transplant in March 2022, the Mount Sinai Lung Transplantation Program has performed a total of 35 lung transplants with a 180-day survival rate of 88.6%, according to a presentation. Read the article in Healio.
By Shennen Mao, M.D., Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
DEAR MAYO CLINIC: A co-worker was diagnosed with kidney disease last year. He is now on dialysis three times a week as he waits for a kidney transplant. He shared his hope to get a living donor, explaining that he will have a longer wait since there are not as many diverse people signed up as organ donors. Can you explain why this is and what can I do to help?
Read the entire article in the Chicago Tribune.
As an organ transplant recipient, you already “know” several things:
Did you also know that the important immunosuppressants (anti-rejection medications) you take to prevent your body from rejecting your transplanted kidney, heart, lung, or liver may increase your risk of developing certain types of
cancer?1 Read the complete article on CareDx.com.
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.
MADRID, April 17 (Reuters) – A Spanish hospital has carried out a lung transplant using a pioneering technique with a robot and a new access route that no longer requires cutting through bone, experts said on Monday.
Surgeons at Vall d’Hebron hospital in Barcelona used a four-armed robot dubbed “Da Vinci” to cut a small section of the patient’s skin, fat and muscle to remove the damaged lung and insert a new one through an eight-centimetre (three-inch) incision below the sternum, just above the diaphragm.
Read the full story from Reuters.
For nearly 40 years, the United Network for Sharing Organs (UNOS) has controlled the organ transplant system.
But that’s about to change. Last week, the government announced plans to completely overhaul the system by breaking up the network’s multi-decade monopoly.
Listen to the full story on NPR.com.
Having an organ transplant can feel like a new lease on life!
You find that you can suddenly do more of the things that you enjoy. However, new recipients are sometimes overwhelmed with all the requirements of post-transplant living. Read the full story on CareDx.com.
Kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) have experienced severe symptoms and poor outcomes with COVID-19. Because the long-term antirejection immunosuppressive drugs that KTRs take could inhibit the development of protective anti-COVID-19 immunity, most hospitals have reduced the drugs’ doses in KTRs with COVID-19. Surprisingly, reported rates of acute rejection have been low despite reduced immunosuppression in these patients. A new study in JASN provides a potential explanation.
To study KTRs’ immune responses in the face of COVID-19, a team lead by Madhav C. Menon, MBBS, MD (Yale University School of Medicine and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) analyzed the blood of 64 KTRs with COVID-19, including 31 acute cases (< 4 weeks from diagnosis) and 33 post-acute cases (>4 weeks). Patients were enrolled form Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospital (Albert Einstein College of Medicine)—two hospitals at the forefront of the pandemic in its early months. Read the full story in Medical Xpress.
Children with increased exposure to nature during childhood had improved lung function in later life, according to study findings published in European Respiratory Journal.
“We found that living in greener neighborhoods as children grow up is more important for their breathing than living in a green area when they were born,” Diogo Queiroz Almeida, MD,PhD candidate in the department of public health and forensic sciences and medical education at the Institute of Public Health, University of Porto, Portugal, said in a press release. “This may be because babies spend much less time outdoors than children.”
Read more in Healio.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a potential therapeutic target in the donor lung that can prevent primary graft dysfunction (PGD) in lung transplant recipients, according to findings published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI).
GR Scott Budinger, MD, chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Medicine and the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Airway Diseases, was senior author of the study.
Read more in Medical Xpress.