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Renowned cardiologist honored for medical contributions in heart transplantation

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Internationally recognized cardiologist in heart transplantation Jon Kobashigawa, MD, director of Advanced Heart Disease and the Heart Transplant Program in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, and chief medical officer of the California Heart Center Foundation, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai, has been selected to receive the highly coveted 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT). Read more in Science X.

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When minutes matter

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A look at the intersecting challenges in organ transportation, and a call for government and industry leaders to join the donation and transplant community in finding national-level solutions that ensure donor organs get safely to patients in need.

In late December 2022, as severe storms swept across the Midwest, a husband and father waited in a North Dakota hospital for a kidney. A lifesaving donor organ had been matched and was ready to be received by his transplant team—but 400 miles separated kidney from recipient, and a blizzard had cancelled all flights. Ultimately, thanks to a determined courier, a tow truck, a sheriff’s deputy whose own sister was a liver transplant recipient, and a snowplow clearing the way on a highway closed by driving snow and 50 mph winds, that gift of life was successfully delivered to its destination. Read more on UNOS.org.

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From Fitness to Failure – And Back

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As a twentysomething fitness instructor, it was admittedly a little disconcerting for Kristy Sidlar when she passed out in front of a class she was teaching back in 1996. She initially chalked it up to not having eaten enough, but she was soon diagnosed with an arrhythmia, given some medication and told not to exercise so much. “That is the kiss of death – to tell that to someone who loves to exercise,” says Sidlar, who is now 54. Read the full story on CareDx.com.

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How blood cancer research might help organ transplant patients

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Fred Hutch study suggests certain immune cells are source of antibodies that attack donated organs

Each day, 13 patients awaiting transplants for severe kidney disease in the U.S. lose their lives before a compatible kidney can be found.

Frequently, it is simply that there are not enough donated organs available, but sometimes it is because the right donor is too rare. Of the 92,000 people in U.S. waiting this year for a kidney transplant, about one in ten will have an especially hard time finding a compatible donor. Read more from the Fred Hutch News Service.

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