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Experts Outline Strategies for Boosting Equity in Chronic Kidney Disease

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— Race-neutral calculations for kidney function, leveling the playing field on waiting lists

By Shannon Firth

Physicians and advocates explored ways to improve access to clinical trials, dialysis, and transplants for racial and ethnic minorities with chronic kidney disease during a webinaropens in a new tab or window hosted by U.S. News & World Report and sponsored by the American Kidney Fund (AKF).

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, people with chronic kidney disease, particularly those in kidney failure, could not isolate the way other people could because they needed to go to dialysis or other medical appointments, explained LaVarne Burton, president and CEO of the AKF.
Read the full article in MedPage Today.

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Algorithm Predicts Post-Transplantation Survival

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A machine-learning algorithm could offer personalized predictions of life expectancy following lung transplantation, research suggests.

The random survival forests (RSF) model had “excellent performance” in predicting both survival overall and at the specific time points of one month and a year, revealed the researchers. Read more in Inside Precision Medicine.

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One in 10 solid organ transplant recipients develops bacteremia 1 year after transplant

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By Caitlyn Stulpin

Nearly 10% of solid organ transplant recipients may develop bacteremia in the first year after transplant, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

“There are limited contemporary robust data on the epidemiology of bacteremia during the first fragile year after a solid organ transplantation,” Dionysios Neofytos, MD, specialist in the division of infectious diseases at the University Hospital of Geneva, told Healio. Read more in Healio.

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Most adults with diabetes report CGM disruptions due to device problems, medical care

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By Michael Monostra
More than 80% of adults with diabetes using continuous glucose monitoring reported at least one instance of needing to stop using their device due to medical care or a device-related problem, according to survey findings.

“CGM disruption is the rule rather than the exception,” Alexis M. McKee, MD, CDCES, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, told Healio. Read the full story in Healio.

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How one woman’s selfless act to donate a kidney led her to the top of the world

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In 2021 Maureen Murphy answered the call to give a part of herself–literally. When she found out her friend Kim Moulton needed a kidney transplant, she offered to be her donor. “I had everything I needed in life, so I thought this was something I could do to help,” Maureen says. She contacted the Dartmouth Hitchcock Transplant center, where Kim was a patient of Michael Daily, MD, section chief of Solid Organ Transplantation at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and told them she wanted to donate one of her kidneys to Kim. Read more in Dartmouth Health.

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GIVING HEART

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A new procedure for donating hearts and other organs is saving lives. But for some it challenges the definition of death

By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

On a chilly holiday Monday in January 2020, a medical milestone passed largely unnoticed. In a New York City operating room, surgeons gently removed the heart from a 43-year-old man who had died and shuttled it steps away to a patient in desperate need of a new one.

More than 3500 people in the United States receive a new heart each year. But this case was different—the first of its kind in the country. Read the full article in Science.

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U-M study may help identify patients needing liver transplants

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by Mary Corey

A recent study conducted by a team of University of Michigan medical researchers may help to identify which patients suffering from acute liver failure need liver transplants to live and which can survive without them, helping hospitals more effectively allocate organ donations. With the overall mortality rate of acute liver failure reaching almost 50%, the researchers set out to find a way to tell which patients most urgently need a liver transplant and which can likely survive without. Read more in The Michigan Daily.

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Reflection on Life 10 Years After Stem Cell Transplant

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By Robert Trebor

A decade ago, I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and underwent aggressive chemotherapy and an allogenic stem cell transplant. Though I still have complications related to my cancer, I’m thankful for what I still have.

I’m still alive. This was not a given 10 years ago, when I was diagnosed with an aggressive case of acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

The usual chemo for AML was applied, but after a few weeks of remission I relapsed, confounding my oncologists. Read the full story in Cure Today.

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Algorithm may help avoid 40% of kidney transplant rejection misdiagnoses: study

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By Nick Paul Taylor

Dive Brief:

  • An algorithm could help pathologists avoid 40% of misdiagnoses of organ transplant rejection and improve patient risk stratification, according to a paper published in Nature Medicine.
  • The decision-support system automatically diagnoses the status of kidney transplants based on the criteria physicians use to determine if a patient is rejecting an organ. Applied to two clinical trials, the algorithm reclassified rejection diagnoses made by pathologists.
    Read the full article in MedTech Dive.
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