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GUEST OPINION: Eliminate kidney transplant waitlist

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By William E. Lombard

The Pacific Northwest region has a history of innovation in kidney research and dialysis with a legacy of mission-driven care to individuals with chronic kidney failure. Access to dialysis is essential to high-quality treatment for people with end-stage renal disease. But the best treatment option for many patients is a kidney transplant from a living donor.

Dialysis patients are inherently vulnerable. Chronic kidney failure (CKF) was once a fatal disease, in every single case. Read the full article in the Lynden Tribune.

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Lesson in kindness: Teacher donates kidney to colleague, both recover in time for 1st day of school

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By Jeff Stitt

MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Over the summer, a New Jersey teacher donated his kidney to a fellow educator. Both teachers recovered in time to be in the classroom for the first day of school. They’re hoping their students take away a life lesson from their story.

Lauren Crupi, who teaches sixth-grade language arts at Saint Leo the Great School is elated to be in front of her class. Check out the full story from KCRA News 3.

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Racial gaps persist in kidney transplantation, particularly among younger patients

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By Shawn M. Carter

Evident racial gaps in transplant waitlist placement between Black and white patients exist, particularly among younger individuals with kidney failure, new data suggests.

“Racial disparities exist at all steps of the kidney transplant process, including waitlisting,” Jade Buford, MPH, of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and lead researcher, told Healio.
Read the full story in Healio.

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Kidney transplants usually last 10 to 15 years. Hers made it 50, but now it’s wearing out.

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By Karen Weintraub

Sharon Stakofsky-Davis and Denice Lombard both carry 90-something-year-old kidneys in their 60-something-year-old bodies.

They are outliers in more than just the obvious ways.

Both women received kidneys from their respective fathers when they were young teenagers, after their own kidneys gave out. Read the full story in USA Today.

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Living Donor Transplant Survivor Takes Center Stage at Giants’ Donate Life Game

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By Jane Bahk

All eyes were on 10-year-old Mason Patel. Nothing would start until he uttered those time-honored words.

“Play ball!” Mason called into the microphone, and the crowd erupted with cheers. 

As this year’s Play Ball Kid, Mason represented organ donor recipients at the San Francisco Giants’ 24th Annual Organ Donor Awareness Day on Aug. 30, also known as Donate Life Day.  Read the full story from Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.

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Still working, but in need of a kidney transplant

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By John Hackley

At 55, Buford area resident Jeff Hadley is in need of a kidney transplant from a genetic condition known as polycystic kidney disease that he was diagnosed with in his mid to late twenties.

Although he has been required to undergo dialysis treatments five days a week for the past year and half, he still works full-time at Lowe’s in Hillsboro. Read the full story in The Times-Gazette.

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For recipient of UCLA Health’s 10,000th kidney transplant, new organ provides new lease on life

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The 42-year-old lost more than 200 pounds and spent a decade on dialysis before receiving a new kidney last year.

By UCLA Health

Ray Jones was 31 when he was blindsided by the news that he had end-stage kidney disease. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been experiencing symptoms: He often felt sluggish and had a hard time catching his breath, and he’d also noticed swelling in his legs due to edema. At the time, though, given that he weighed about 450 pounds, he simply chalked up the symptoms as being weight-related. Read the full story from UCLA Health.

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How machine learning could aid compatibility in kidney transplantation

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Through the PURM internship program, undergraduate students are further researching an algorithm developed to group kidney donor-recipient pairs into low-risk and high-risk groups for graft survival.

By Erica Moser

The United States saw a record 25,487 kidney transplants in 2021, according to the latest annual data report from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. Five years after transplantation, successful organ function—called graft survival—of kidneys from deceased donors was 81% among patients ages 18 to 34 and 68% among people older than 65.
Read the full article in Penn Today.

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How machine learning could aid compatibility in kidney transplantation

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By Erica Moser

The United States saw a record 25,487 kidney transplants in 2021, according to the latest annual data report from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. Five years after transplantation, successful organ function—called graft survival—of kidneys from deceased donors was 81% among patients ages 18 to 34 and 68% among people older than 65.

Malek Kamoun of the Perelman School of Medicine and Ryan Urbanowicz of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center are developing machine learning strategies to improve kidney matching and decrease the risk of graft failure—with help from Penn students. Read the full article in Medical Xpress.

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Donating a kidney can be safe for people living with HIV, study shows

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Reviewed by Lily Ramsey, LLM

Based on findings from a study published today in the journal The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and three collaborating medical institutions suggest that people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who donate a kidney to other people living with HIV (PLWH) have a low risk of developing end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) or other kidney problems in the years following the donation. Read the full article in News Medical Life Sciences.

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