“According to Dr. Dominic Emerson, a transplant surgeon with the Smidt Heart Institute at the Medical Center, organs like the heart can only last about four hours on ice outside of the body. With the “Heart in a Box,” transplant surgeons have more time to recover an organ for transplant, which means they can go a farther distance to retrieve an organ for a patient in need.”
Read the full article, here.
“Kidneys are the most in demand organs throughout the country with more than 100,000 people on the transplant waiting list. The tragedy, says a West Lafayette-based startup, is that nearly 30% of the 20,000 kidneys recovered for transplant each year are discarded before they reach the recipient. Renovera, which recently opened space at the Purdue Research Park, is developing technology it says could rescue the vast majority of discarded kidneys and recondition them for transplant. Laser focused on its mission to save thousands of lives, and boosted by Purdue’s aviation might, Renovera says the technology is nearly ready for takeoff.
Renovera founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Jaynes is confident the startup’s technology could recondition 80% of the kidneys that are deemed unusable, and his word carries weight in the world of transplantation; Jaynes created the technology currently used in the U.S. to rehabilitate donor lungs.
While kidneys are discarded for a variety of reasons, Jaynes says they often hinge on a single element: time. The current U.S. standard requires that kidneys are out of the body no longer than 20 hours to be viable for transplant.”
Full full article, here.
“WACO, Texas (KWTX) – Coleen Heaton, the director and founder of the nonprofit No Limitations, which was formed to support those in the special needs community through sports and other activities, practiced what she preached about ‘loving with no limitations’ after reading a Facebook post from a friend whose husband needed a kidney transplant.
“I saw a post on Facebook that someone I knew loved someone who needed a kidney. Without much thought or consideration, I looked at my husband and said, ‘What would you say if I said I wanted to donate a kidney?’ And he, knowing me as well as he does and supporting me as strongly as he does, said ‘I guess you’re going to walk around with one kidney for the rest of your life.’”
Heaton had never met her friend’s husband, but after she saw the post on Dec. 16, she contacted the transplant center that night to start the process of filling out questionnaires and testing.
She wasn’t a match for her friend’s husband, but she was a match for another person in need of a kidney and she was told if she agreed to donate to that person, her friend’s husband would also get a kidney in what’s called a paired exchange.”
Read the full story, here.
“A COVID-19 patient in Japan has received the world’s first lung transplant from living donors.
Receiving transplant lung tissue from her son and husband, the patient underwent an 11-hour operation at Kyoto University Hospital to receive her transplant last Wednesday.
The woman who underwent the operation contracted COVID-19 late last year. According to Kyoto University Hospital, she spent months on a life support machine acting as an artificial lung, because hers had become no longer functional. It’s expected that she’ll recover from last week’s operation within months.”
Read the full story, here.
Organ donation and kidney transplants have made an “amazing” recovery from the worst days of the pandemic, a speaker said here, with more than 33,000 kidney transplants performed in 2020.
“There were some parts of the Northeast where there were zero living donor transplants done for weeks,” Matthew Cooper, MD, director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute and professor of surgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine, said during a presentation at the virtual National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings. “It was amazing how the country regained … the key was getting organs to areas where transplants could happen.”
Read the full article, here.
“Lots of people have questions about getting vaccinated against COVID-19. That includes the millions of Americans with weakened immune systems that put them at higher risk of severe disease if they do get infected with the coronavirus.
“Patients want to know whether it’s safe to get it and, if they do get it, which one should they get? And of course, they also have concerns about how it can affect their own condition as well,” says Dr. Sharon Dowell, a rheumatologist at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., who says she has been getting a barrage of questions from patients lately.
People can be immunocompromised for a wide range of reasons. Some are being treated with immunosuppressive medications for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s disease or psoriasis. Others are organ transplant recipients on powerful anti-rejection medications or cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.
Dowell and other doctors say vaccinating immunocompromised patients is especially important. But it also raises special considerations that these patients should discuss with their doctor beforehand. Here’s what you need to know.”
Read the full article, here.
“Natural immunity and vaccine responses may be weaker in people with immune suppression, so they should get their second dose promptly
A majority of people with cancer and organ transplant recipients are capable of mounting an immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and can gain immunity from COVID-19 vaccines, according to recent research. But people with immune suppression may have slower and weaker responses to natural infection or vaccination, so it is especially important that they get their second dose on schedule.
People with serious immune suppression are at risk for more severe complications and death due to COVID-19. This group includes cancer patients who use immune-suppressing therapy, transplant recipients who take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent organ rejection and people with AIDS (advanced, uncontrolled HIV disease).
It is well known that immunosuppressed people can have weaker immune responses to natural infection and vaccination, but SARS-CoV-2 immunity in this population is not well understood. What’s more, cancer patients on treatment and other people with advanced immune suppression were generally excluded from COVID-19 vaccine trials (though people with well-controlled HIV could enroll).”
Read the full article, here.
“The American Kidney Fund (AKF) today issues the following statement in response to the Biden-Harris administration’s announcement that COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed directly to end-stage renal disease (ESRD, or kidney failure) patients at dialysis clinics:
“On behalf of the 555,000 Americans who rely on dialysis to survive, AKF is grateful to the Biden-Harris administration for announcing its plans to distribute COVID-19 vaccines directly to ESRD patients at the nation’s dialysis clinics. AKF recently met with Congressional and Biden-Harris administration officials to recommend this action. Vaccine distribution for ESRD patients at dialysis clinics will be a major step forward in protecting people with kidney failure from COVID-19 and in addressing disparities in our health care system that disproportionately impact the kidney patient community.”
Read the full article, here.
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WASHINGTON, D.C., December 21, 2020 – Honor the Gift, a national, patient-centered coalition dedicated to improving the lives of kidney transplant patients and honoring the gift of their donors, today celebrates the passage of the Comprehensive Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage for Kidney Transplant Patients Act of 2019 (H.R. 5534 / S. 3353).
This critical legislation, known to many in the community as the Immuno Bill, marks an important milestone in the history of American kidney care. For more than twenty years, patients, donors and their supporters have advocated for the extension of Medicare part B coverage of immunosuppressive medications for kidney transplant recipients. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Honor the Gift coalition and the entire kidney, donation and transplant community, Congress has finally taken action to honor the gift.”
Read the full press release, here.
“Two years ago, a 9-year-old Baltimore gymnast named Khloe Cox was rising through the competitive ranks, winning awards and following in the footsteps of her hero: Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles.
But all that changed one day in 2018, when her parents got a call from her coach. Khloe had fallen ill with a fever and abdominal pain. The young athlete turned out to have a rare stage IV neuroendocrine tumor that had started in her pancreas and spread to her liver.
Khloe needed a dual liver-pancreas transplant, but given her age and the complexity of the surgery, only a handful of surgeons in the world could perform it. Among them was Srinath Chinnakotla, clinical director of pediatric transplantation at M Health Fairview University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital.”
Read the full story, here.