One of the most important responsibilities you will have after getting your kidney transplant is following a prescribed and complex medication regimen.
Taking immunosuppressant (anti-rejection) medications will be required for the rest of your life. Read the full article on CareDx.com.
By Beatrice Concepcion, MD
It has been almost 70 years since the first successful living donor kidney transplant between identical twin brothers was performed at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.
Since then, tremendous advances have been made in the specialty, particularly in overcoming immunologic barriers to transplantation, including modern-day immunosuppression.
Read more in Healio.
In 2021 Maureen Murphy answered the call to give a part of herself–literally. When she found out her friend Kim Moulton needed a kidney transplant, she offered to be her donor. “I had everything I needed in life, so I thought this was something I could do to help,” Maureen says. She contacted the Dartmouth Hitchcock Transplant center, where Kim was a patient of Michael Daily, MD, section chief of Solid Organ Transplantation at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, and told them she wanted to donate one of her kidneys to Kim. Read more in Dartmouth Health.
By Kristen Monaco
SEATTLE — Even for new kidney transplant recipients with diabetes, GLP-1 receptor agonists (RAs) were safe and effective, a researcher reported here.
In a retrospective study, kidney transplant patients who were on insulin with or without other oral antidiabetic medications when they started a GLP-1 RA were able to significantly cut back on their total daily insulin dose requirements, said Mario Campana, MD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Read more in Medpage Today.
By Natasha Persaud
A panel of 3 transplant surgeons who are urologists debated the pros and cons of an open vs robotic-assisted approach to kidney transplantation at the American Urological Association’s 2023 Annual Scientific Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.1
Moderator Nicholas Cowan, MD, of Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, stated that the first robotic-assisted kidney transplantation (RAKT) was performed in 2010 in the United States, whereas open kidney transplantation (OKT) has been performed since the 1950s. Read more in Renal & Urology News.
By Bernard S. Little
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is the only Department of Defense military medical treatment facility (MTF) that performs kidney transplants, and the Organ Transplant Service at WRNMMC has been rated as one of the top transplant programs in the nation. According to data published by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR), which supports the transplant community with analyses to better patient experiences and outcomes, WRNMMC’s Organ Transplant Service is ranked in the top tier of all U.S. transplant programs and has a 97 percent one-year patient and graft survival rate. Read more in the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).
By Ryn Thorn
African Americans are more than three times as likely to have kidney failure than Whites but four times less likely to have received a kidney transplant by one year after developing kidney failure. Researchers from the Department of Surgery at MUSC are attempting to address this inequity.
Kidney transplant surgeon Derek DuBay, M.D., and director of clinical trials David Taber, Pharm.D., developed an initiative to help to address kidney transplant disparities affecting African Americans. Read more from the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC).
More than 100,000 people need an organ in the United States. Of those patients, almost 90,000 are waiting to receive a kidney. We can all check that box on our license to donate an organ if something happens to us, but did you know you could save a life now?
Living donors can lead healthy, long lives and save others. Kidneys from living donors are superior in almost every way. There are fewer complications, the kidney begins to work sooner, and it allows flexibility in planning surgeries. Read more from Dartmouth Health.
Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and end-stage kidney disease are less likely to be evaluated to kidney transplantation compared to peers without disabilities, according to data published in JAMA Surgery. Read more in Healio.
Although Black individuals suffer from kidney failure at a markedly increased rate compared with White individuals in the US, Black patients have reduced access to kidney transplants and are significantly underrepresented on kidney transplant waitlists. New research from the Journal of the American College of Surgeons shows, however, that reducing structural barriers in access to kidney transplants can reduce inequity in tandem.
Read more from the American College of Surgeons (ACS).