Logan was diagnosed with a rare genetic mutation that causes bile to build up in the liver. Logan’s parents didn’t want to wait any longer in Florida for a transplant. So they checked out a pediatric liver transplant program in Pittsburgh at UPMC Children’s Hospital. Watch this story on WTAE-TV Pittsburgh.
OHSU only Oregon hospital using perfusion machine in liver transplantation
By Franny White
Oregon Health & Science University is the only hospital in Oregon and one of just two Pacific Northwest hospitals that use a new medical device that has been nicknamed a “liver in the box.”
Seven OHSU patients have undergone transplants since April thanks to the device. Read the full story in OHSU News.
By Nicole C. Brambila and Noah Festenstein
Surgeons at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital’s transplant center in Aurora performed what is believed to be the first robotic liver transplant surgery on a living donor in the Rocky Mountain region, officials announced in a news release.
“We are never satisfied with where we are,” said Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret, Chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at UCHealth, in the release.
Read the full story in The Denver Gazette.
By Ashley Vargo
ST. LOUIS — A surgical team from Washington University’s School of Medicine has successfully performed the first robot-assisted whole-liver transplant in the U.S. — and the patient was cleared to get back on the golf course just a month later.
The surgery took place in May at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and the patient — a man in his 60s with liver cancer and cirrhosis due to a hepatitis C infection — has recovered swiftly, according to his doctors.
Read the full story in The Virginian-Pilot.
By Mike Bassett
For a select group of patients with colorectal cancer and unresectable liver metastases, liver transplant may be a reasonable option, according to results from a prospective, nonrandomized controlled cohort study.
Overall, among 61 patients who underwent liver transplant, the median disease-free survival (DFS) was 11.8 months (95% CI 9.3-14.2), with a 5-year DFS rate of 18.3%, and the median overall survival (OS) was 60.3 months (95% CI 44.3-76.4), with a 5-year OS rate of 50.4%, reported Svein Dueland, MD, PhD, of Oslo University Hospital in Norway, and colleagues. Read the full article in MedPage Today.
A new study identifies how certain proteins in the immune system interact leading to organ rejection. The study, which involved experiments on mice and human patients, uncovered an important communication pathway between two molecules called CEACAM1 (CC1) and TIM-3, finding that the pathway plays a crucial role in controlling the body’s immune response during liver transplantation. Read the full article from UCLA Health.
By Kate Burba
Disparities in receipt of liver transplantation and mortality persisted over time among hospitalized Black and Hispanic patients with decompensated cirrhosis compared with their white counterparts, according to data inJAMA Network Open.
“There had been no characterization of disparities in receipt of inpatient procedures for cirrhosis in over a decade,” Lauren D. Nephew, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of gastroenterology and hepatology and associate vice chair of health equity at Indiana University School of Medicine, told Healio. Read the full article in Healio.
Reviewed by Megan Craig, M. Sc.
A surgical team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently performed the first robotic liver transplant in the U.S. in May at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
A surgical team from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis recently performed the first robotic liver transplant in the U.S. Read the full article in News Medical Life Sciences.
By Mindy Basara
BALTIMORE — When one doctor at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center tells her young patients, “I know what you’re going through,” she truly does.
When Kathryn Smith was 17, she got very sick.
“I had cirrhosis of the liver that had not been picked up which is not totally uncommon,” Smith said. Read the full story from WBAL TV 11 News.
By Rose Conlon
OLATHE, Kansas — Last year, Gary Gray’s liver disease got so bad that it began poisoning his mind, sucking him into imaginary conversations with people who weren’t there.
At one point, he became convinced that his family had turned their home into a commercial haunted house. Check out the full story on NPR.