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Hearts from COVID-19-positive donors appear safe for transplant

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Donor hearts from people with COVID-19 may be just as safe as those from people without, finds a short-term analysis of the first such transplants done in the United States.

“These findings suggest that we may be able to be more aggressive about accepting donors that are positive for COVID-19 when patients are in dire need of an organ for heart transplantation,” study researcher Samuel T. Kim said in a news release. Kim is a third-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Read more from American Heart Association News.

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Managing and Preventing Diabetes After an Organ Transplant

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Complications of posttransplant diabetes mellitus can develop quickly, but appropriate management may prevent them.

People with end-stage kidney disease achieve better quality of life and survival rates with a kidney transplant than with dialysis, but if they develop posttransplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM), they are at high risk for rapidly developing cardiovascular disease or other complications. Maria Paula Martinez-Cantarin, MD, a nephrologist and researcher at Thomas Jefferson University, describes how physicians can manage PTDM and prevent complications. Read the full article from National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

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Waitlist Eligibility and Disparities in Transplant Access

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By Adrian Whelan
There are over 138,000 patients on the waiting list for a kidney transplant in the United States, as the demand for kidney transplants continues to greatly exceed the number of organs available for transplantation. This limits the number of patients who can benefit from the improvements in quality of life and survival offered by kidney transplantation. Ensuring equitable access to such a limited supply of organs is a major priority of the transplant community, including the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) which oversees policy development for organ allocation in the United States. Indeed, the OPTN includes providing equity in access to transplants as one of its  four key goals in its strategic plan. Read this full article in the AJKD Blog.

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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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She’s celebrating her 50th birthday and 9th anniversary of her heart transplant

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At 26, Melody Hickman of Raleigh, North Carolina, was crestfallen. A routine physical detected a problem with her mitral valve. Fixing it required open-heart surgery.

“I knew I would have to be on a heart-lung machine, and the idea of having the incision really bothered me,” she said, noting she often wore V-neck tops. “It was a lot to digest.”

The surgery and recovery went well. Then, 14 years later, the valve needed to be replaced again. That meant a second open-heart surgery. Read more from American Heart Association News.

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Lung transplant recipients remain at high risk for severe disease, mortality from omicron variant

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Despite a lower overall mortality rate, lung transplant recipients remain at high risk for severe disease and death from the COVID-19 omicron variant compared with both the general population and other respiratory infections.

“[The omicron variant] is shown to be associated with lower severity of illness in the general population, particularly among the vaccinated, compared to the preceding variants,” Jamie Hum, DNP, lung transplant nurse practitioner in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine and with the Lung Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and colleagues wrote in Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Read more in Healio.

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11 Kidney Transplant Recovery Tips

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Rest, hydration, protein and light exercise all play an important role in your healing

Getting a kidney transplant gives you a new lease on life. A successful transplant gives you increased strength, stamina and energy — but while you’re recovering from surgery, you may not quite feel that way yet.

If you’re about to undergo kidney transplant surgery, here’s what you need to know about recovery. Read more from the Cleveland Clinic.

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Transplant Center reaches milestone: 5,000 kidney transplants

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(SACRAMENTO) UC Davis Health reached an institutional milestone in August, surpassing 5,000 kidney transplants performed since its first almost 37 years ago.

Established in 1985, the UC Davis Transplant Center performed 282 kidney transplants in 2021, making UC Davis Health one of  the top 10 centers in the nation  for total kidney transplants. Read more from UC Davis Health News.

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1M organ transplants – what comes next?

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The director of the Hume-Lee Transplant Center reflects on the milestone of 1 million transplanted organs in the U.S. and what’s next for the world of transplantation.

In September 2022, the United States reached 1 million organ transplants. Far outpacing other countries with this accomplishment, the demand for transplants still drastically outweighs the supply. Currently, the national organ waitlist is over 100,000 people and many die on the waitlist.

To learn more about how VCU Health’s Hume-Lee Transplant Center is working to meet this demand and what’s next for the future of transplants, we sat down with Dr. Marlon Levy, chief medical officer at VCU Medical Center and director of the transplant center.
Read the full story from VCU Health.

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Transplant organization releases guidance on monkeypox

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The American Society of Transplantation has released guidance on preventive measures and treatment of monkeypox for individuals with an organ transplant, along with guidance for accepting donated organs from individuals with the virus.

“This communication is intended to inform the transplant community of the potential risk caused by monkeypox to our transplant patients,” members of the American Society of Transplantation Monkeypox Task Force wrote. “While there have been no published data on monkeypox in transplant recipients, there is an imminent threat to this immunocompromised group of patients, if the ongoing human-to-human spread continues.”

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