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“In this video, we discuss pregnancy and family planning post-transplant including information about contraception options and immunosuppressive medications.“
Watch the video, here.
“Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, and Rep. Michael Cloud, the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, will hold a virtual hearing to examine the nation’s system for securing organs for transplant for patients suffering from organ failure.
More than 107,000 patients in the United States are waiting for an organ for transplant. Every day, an estimated 33 people in the United States die while waiting for their transplant. Hundreds of thousands more are on kidney dialysis and could benefit from a kidney transplant but are not even on a waitlist. The number of available organs for transplant does not meet this critical need. For the past four years, on average only 37,500 organs were transplanted annually, including around 31,000 organs from deceased donors and 6,500 organs from living donors.
Recently, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized an OPO reform rule that it estimates will increase transplants by 5,600 to 7,300 per year. Unfortunately, the rule will not be enforced until 2026, while patients continue to suffer.
This hearing will highlight the urgent need to take immediate action to reform OPOs and obtain more organs for transplant, while uplifting patient voices and underscoring racial, geographic, and socioeconomic inequities in organ donation and transplant processes.”
You can watch the full hearing, here.
“Transplant recipients without prior polymerase chain reaction–confirmed COVID-19 were recruited from across the US to participate in this prospective cohort through a digital campaign. Those who completed the 2-dose SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine series between December 16, 2020, and March 13, 2021, were included and followed up through April 13, 2021. As described previously,3 semiquantitative antispike serologic testing was undertaken with the Roche Elecsys anti–SARS-CoV-2 S enzyme immunoassay, positive cutoff of at least 0.8 U/mL, which tests for the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, or the EUROIMMUN enzyme immunoassay, positive cutoff of at least 1.1 arbitrary units, which tests for the S1 domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, both key measures of humoral immune response.4,5 This study was approved by the Johns Hopkins institutional review board; participants provided informed consent electronically.
The proportion of patients who developed a positive antibody response was assessed with an exact binomial confidence interval. The Fisher exact test was used to compare categorical variables, such as antimetabolite immunosuppression, and the Kruskal-Wallis test for continuous variables. All tests were 2-sided with α = .05. Analyses were performed using Stata 16.1/Windows.”
See the full study results, here.
“UNOS has implemented a new system for matching kidney and pancreas transplant candidates with organs from deceased donors.
The new approach is projected to increase equity in transplant access for candidates nationwide. It replaces distribution based on donation service area (DSA) and OPTN region with a more consistent measure of distance between the donor hospital and the transplant hospital for each candidate. This will further ensure the right organ gets to the right patient at the right time based on medical need rather than geography.
The policy was developed over nearly three years by organ donation and transplant experts, organ recipients and donor families from around the country, and input from thousands of people during three public comment cycles.
Kidney and pancreas offers will be offered first to candidates listed at transplant hospitals within 250 nautical miles of the donor hospital. Offers not accepted for any of these candidates will then be made for candidates beyond the 250 nautical mile distance.
Candidates also will receive proximity points based on the distance between their transplant program and the donor hospital. Proximity points are intended to improve the efficiency of organ placement by adding priority for candidates closer to the donor hospital. Candidates within the initial 250 nautical mile radius will receive a maximum of two proximity points, while those outside the initial circle will receive a maximum of four proximity points. The point assignment will be highest for those closest to the donor hospital and will decrease as the distance increases.”
Read all about the new policy, here.
“Jim Gleason, National President of Transplant Recipients International Organization (TRIO), discusses what organ transplant patients are experiencing during the pandemic, and some tips they ought to consider to help ease some of the burden.
Mr. Gleason also discusses his role in the development of the recently released AlloCare app is in the AppStore, to help post-transplant recipients navigate their day-to-day health.”
Read the full interview here.
“It’s definitely part of my calling, helping people,” she said. “Even just reading his story and seeing his picture on the Facebook page, he was the cutest thing ever.” Pikkarainen, a traveling nurse from Minnesota, was working with COVID-19 patients in New Jersey when she heard about Bodie. “I filled out the paperwork right then and there,” she recalled.
Read the full article here.
“Organ transplantation works for people who have end-stage organ failure. In almost all cases, it works better for people with kidney, liver, and lung failure than any other treatment available. People come to the organ donation waiting list because they know an organ transplant is a gift of life. That means that as good as our system is, it needs to be even better to be able to serve the more than 100,000 people waiting for organs at any given time.”
Read the full blog post from UNOS here.