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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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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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Diabetes-Related CKD Rates Dropped Slightly in Recent Years

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— But high incidence, especially in certain racial groups, remains a concern

Rates of chronic kidney disease (CKD) in people with diabetes have dipped in recent years but still remain high, researchers reported.

Between 2015 and 2020, the incidence of CKD among those with diabetes dropped by an estimated 17.6 cases per 1,000 person-years, Katherine R. Tuttle, MD, of Providence Health in Spokane, Washington, and colleagues wrote in a New England Journal of Medicine correspondence. Read the full story in MedPage Today.

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Study investigates the link between protein intake and skeletal muscle mass in kidney transplant recipients

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Conventional wisdom holds that low protein intake is essential for kidney disease patients. However, scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University demonstrated that it might not always be the case with their recent study on the relationship between protein intake and skeletal muscle mass in kidney transplant recipients. Their findings were published in Clinical Nutrition. Read more in News Medical Life Sciences.

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