Adolescent and young adult organ transplant recipients require supportive clinical care when transitioning to adult health care, according to data published in Pediatric Transplantation.
Further, successful retention in adult health care showed a stronger correlation to improved clinical outcomes compared with initial engagement. Read the full story in Healio.
A baby girl who has been living in a Chicago hospital with her parents for the last six months while waiting for a new heart finally received one last week.
Elodie Carmen Baker received a heart transplant at The Heart Center at Lurie Children’s Hospital on March 27. Elodie was about 7 weeks old when she was diagnosed with a rare heart condition in August 2021 called dilated cardiomyopathy. She had been on the waitlist for a new heart for over 200 days. Read the full story here.
Inevitably, the call comes in the dark hours of the morning, the result of something tragic. Dr. Michael McCulloch, an associate professor and pediatric cardiologist at UVA Children’s Heart Center, picks up the phone. A voice on the other end explains, as he knew it would, that a pediatric heart donation is available. Does he want it?
Urgency is never felt so keenly as when it involves organ donorship. Read the full story.
Duke University doctors say a baby is thriving after a first-of-its-kind heart transplant — one that came with a bonus technique to try to help prevent rejection of the new organ.
The thymus plays a critical role in building the immune system. Doctors have wondered if implanting some thymus tissue that matched a donated organ might help it survive without the recipient needing toxic anti-rejection medicines. Read more.
Adherence promotion strategies, such as the Medication Adherence Promotion System, proved to be cost-effective and improved rejection rates among adolescent kidney transplant recipients, according to a published study.
“To date, there are several randomized controlled trials that show systems to improve medication adherence can improve adherence in transplant patients, but they have not demonstrated a decrease in rejection rates — which is the primary purpose to improve medication adherence in transplant patients,” Charles D. Varnell Jr., MD, MS, assistant medical director of kidney transplantation from the division of nephrology and hypertension at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio, told Healio.
Read more.
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.
Santana Renchie takes on life as if she knows—at the tender age of 2—that she’s lucky to be alive. She’s sassy, full of joy, and determined to not miss a single moment of fun.
“There’s nothing stopping her. She’s relentless. If she wants something, she just goes for it,” says her dad, Sebron. Read the full story.