The retrovirus coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has had a profound impact on all facets of the medical industry. Media and medical experts alike have held a keen focus on, and have requested the aid of otolaryngologists, virologists, and general respiratory equipment. However, many auxiliary branches of medicine are being affected by the COVID-19 virus. Read the complete article in News Medical.
NEW YORK – Taking organ donor and recipient genetics into consideration — via a polygenic risk score (PRS) — may help identify individuals at risk of developing diabetes after a solid organ transplant.
“Our study demonstrates the importance, and the potential application, of PRS in solid organ transplantation,” co-first and corresponding author Abraham Shaked, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Transplant Institute, and his coauthors wrote in Nature Medicine on Thursday. Read the story in GenomeWeb here.
Existing and emerging biotech advances are transforming the way we preserve and transport donated organs. While their methods may vary, all share a common end goal: saving more lives.
National Donate Life Month, celebrated every April, is here once again. It’s a time to acknowledge and encourage the gift of life that organ donation provides. Since the first successful organ transplant in 1954, countless lives have been saved through transplants. Just last year, surgeons performed a record number of transplants — more than 40,000, roughly 60 percent of which were kidneys alone.
But there are some 106,000 people currently on the national transplant waiting list and, with another person being added every nine minutes, this need outpaces supply. Every day, an estimated 17 people die waiting for an available organ. And lack of supply isn’t the only barrier to transplants; viability of the organs is another issue. Thousands of donated organs go to waste each year because they don’t reach a potential recipient in time.
Read the full story.
Difference makers can bring about meaningful changes that affect people’s lives on different levels. Drawing on her MIT background and passion to make a difference in the lives of others, sasha king has led to a remarkable patient-centered approach to scientific innovation and commercial growth since joining careDx as the Head of Marketing†
Sasha’s passion for impacting patients’ lives has helped CareDx deliver a new standard of care for patients who have traded end-stage organ failure for a second chance at life with an organ transplant. She has also helped simplify patients’ daily lives by conducting home blood tests for immunocompromised transplant recipients during a global pandemic.
Read more.
Al Brown lay in a hospital bed at the Center for Care & Discovery at the University of Chicago Medicine, in disbelief. He had contracted Covid-19 in May 2020, during the early days of the pandemic. He knew the infection was serious, but he had no idea it would ravage his heart.
Initially, the Riverdale resident thought he had the flu and found it hard to breathe. He took himself to UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. Doctors there told him he had Covid-19. He was in the hospital for a week, hooked up to oxygen to help his breathing. Then he went back home, figuring he would recover. Read the full story.
Early success with a procedure called a mitochondrial transplant offers a glimmer of hope for people fighting for survival after heart attack, stroke, and more.
If you saw six-year-old Avery in her dance class today, you’d never guess that she almost died from a heart defect. She underwent her first open heart surgery shortly after birth, and the procedure left much of her heart damaged. After two months in the hospital, she was deemed healthy enough to go home. But her mum, Jess Blias, rushed her back a few weeks later because Avery had “turned blue.” Her heart was only pumping at half its capacity, and she needed another surgery. Read more.
The brain-organ connection is complex. Here’s what surgeons look for before, during and after a transplantation.
Livers outnumber people in Catherine Kling’s operating room at the University of Washington Medical Center. On this particular day, the extra organ — the only one ex-vivo, cleaned and sitting on ice — arrived just hours before the transplantation, the culmination of a thoughtful and time-consuming process of diagnoses, donor locating, evaluations and transportation, all sequenced by many expert pairs of eyes and hands. Read more.
Living-kidney donation is a precious gift for someone who is suffering from end-stage kidney disease. If an individual’s kidneys are damaged or diseased, they may be able to donate one of their two healthy organs. The remaining kidney will then take over the functions necessary for life. Kidney donation doesn’t affect the function or survival of your remaining kidney. Many living donors go on to lead healthy lives as well. Instead, your remaining kidney may increase its capacity to function by an average of 22.4%. This is known as “compensatory growth.” Read the full story.
Despite challenges presented by an ever-changing pandemic, generous donors and their families contributed to a record-setting number of kidney transplants in 2021. On average, 68 people received a new kidney, and an opportunity to live without dialysis, each day in 2021. Read more.
Diet is one of many challenges that patients face post-transplant – the combination of requirements and restrictions can be difficult to navigate. To help, CareDx partnered with Molly Chanzis, a Registered Dietitian at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center specializing in medical nutrition therapy and nutrition counseling specifically for transplant patients.
We hosted a webinar with Molly focused on diet and nutrition post-transplant; this article has been adapted from Molly’s presentation. Read the full article here.