They say their children are being denied transplants because of their disabilities. A new federal law may help change that.

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A patient with disabilities can be denied life-saving organ transplants because of those disabilities, and parents often fear the worst. Families have won protections in many states — including 14 in the last year. 

But more than three decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act — which prohibits discrimination based on a person’s disability — became federal law, advocates say inequities persist in health care. Read more.

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Location Shouldn’t Matter in Telemedicine

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At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us pivoted to providing a great deal of care over video visits — telehealth encounters over Zoom and other platforms — where patients could stay safely in their homes and still receive healthcare.

This served an incredible public health purpose, protecting patients from coming in for their routine care while still being able to give them ongoing healthcare through contact with their doctors. Read the full story.

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Low incidence of donor-specific antibodies for kidney transplant recipients with COVID-19

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Despite a significant decrease in immunosuppression, the occurrence of post-COVID-19 donor-specific antibodies among COVID-19-positive kidney transplant recipients was low, according to data published in Kidney International Reports.

“Greater severity of COVID-19 has been reported in kidney transplant recipients and is most likely due to comorbidities and immunosuppressive therapy,” Christophe Masset, MD, from the Clinic Institute of Transplantation Urology Nephrology (ITUN) at the University Hospital of Nantes in France, and colleagues wrote.  Read the full story.

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Increased Rates of Heart Transplants in Patients With a Malignancy History

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Over the past 2 decades, the rate of heart transplantation among patients with pretransplant malignancy (PTM) has increased dramatically. Although heart transplant recipients with a prior malignancy may be at an increased risk for early mortality, particularly those with a hematologic cancer, death rates after the first posttransplant year are comparable between patients with and without PTM. Results of an analysis of this patient population were published in the journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

A contemporary retrospective analysis of adults in the United Network for Organ Sharing registry was conducted among patients with PTM who had received heart transplantation between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2020. Read more.

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Study compares heterologous and homologous third vaccination in kidney transplant recipients

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As of February 28, 2022, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused over 5.95 million deaths worldwide, with especially high rates of mortality reported among the elderly, frail, and immunocompromised.

Kidney transplant recipients are among the most at-risk individuals of COVID-19 due to the need for long-term immunosuppressive medication to avoid rejection. Their response to vaccination is also poor, and researchers continue to examine methods to achieve a better vaccine response in this population. Read more.

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By altering the blood type of lungs, researchers raise the possibility of universal organs for transplants

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t was 4 a.m. on a humid night in St. Catharines, Ontario, and Elizabeth Ostrander couldn’t breathe. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, complicated by pneumonia, was suffocating her, doctors told her that day in 2016. If she hadn’t gotten to the hospital when she did, she would have died, Ostrander remembers them saying. She was in her early 50s.
Read the full story here.

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THINKER-NEXT Studies the Transplant of HCV-Infected Kidneys

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The next stage of the THINKER project — THINKER-NEXT — is aiming to settle any lingering concerns that patients and centers might have about using kidneys from hepatitis C (HCV)-infected donors and transplanting them into HCV-negative recipients in need of a kidney transplant.

Armed with an $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia will evaluate the long-term risks and benefits of transplanting kidneys from HCV-positive donors into HCV-negative recipients and compare outcomes with those attained following transplantation of HCV-negative kidneys into HCV-negative recipients. Read more.

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