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How New Advances in Organ Transplants Are Saving Lives

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Advances are increasing the supply of organs. But this isn’t enough. Enter the genetically modified donor pig

By Tanya Lewis

Robert Montgomery walked deliberately down the hospital hallway carrying a stainless-steel bowl containing a living human kidney resting on a bed of ice. Minutes earlier the organ had been in one man’s body. It was about to be implanted into another man to keep him alive.

It was about 11 A.M. on a Monday this past spring. I followed Montgomery, an abdominal transplant surgeon and director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, into an operating room where 49-year-old John Primavera was waiting to receive the precious kidney.
Read the full article in Scientific American.

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Race-free eGFR for transplantation offers a more accurate measurement for recipients

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By Mark E. Neumann

A new race-free eGFR equation designed specifically for evaluating organ recipients post-transplant offers a more accurate measurement, a researcher said at the American Transplant Congress.

Marc Raynaud, PhD, MSc, lead scientist at Paris Institute for Transplantation and Organ Regeneration, told attendees that previously created eGFR equation measures used for transplantation have had limited success because they were developed for use on native kidneys, created based on U.S.-only patient data, which may limit their generalizability, and have shown suboptimal performance in measuring GFR in transplanted kidneys. Read the full article in Healio.

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Duke’s Organ Transplant Program: Out With the Old, In With the New

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By Dave Hart

Excellence and Innovation Drive Duke’s Organ Transplant Program

Nicole Wills knew she was in trouble.

For the previous two years, Wills had been under evaluation and treatment for pulmonary fibrosis as an outpatient at Duke University Hospital, making the trip to Durham every three months from her home in Cramerton, a small town near Charlotte. She had recently undergone a lobectomy, but she was otherwise young and fit, exercising regularly and raising an active 10-year-old son. Read the full story from Duke University School of Medicine.

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Many Hospitals Ignore Directives of Organ Transplant Waiting Lists: Study

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By Cara Murez, HealthDay Reporter

Many transplant centers routinely practice “list-diving,” when the top candidate among potential organ recipients is skipped in favor of someone further down the list, new research shows.

The top candidate is ranked that way based on an objective algorithm using age, waiting time and other factors, while choosing someone else happens with little oversight or transparency. Read more from U.S. News and World Report.

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Outgoing transplant society president says organ supply, outcomes remain challenges

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By Mark E. Neumann

Despite advances in the last 7 decades, some challenges remain for transplantation, including a limited organ supply and improving long-term outcomes, the outgoing president of the American Society of Transplantation said in a presentation.

“Two decades ago, I attended my first [American Transplant Congress] ATC meeting and fell in love with transplantation,” Deepali Kumar, MD, MSc, FRCP(C), a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and director of transplant infectious diseases at the University Health Network, told attendees at the ATC in San Diego. Read more in Healio.

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Transplant Centers Often Skip the Top Spot on the Kidney Waitlist

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By F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Welcome to Impact Factor, your weekly dose of commentary on a new medical study. I’m Dr F. Perry Wilson of the Yale School of Medicine.

The idea of rationing medical care is anathema to most doctors. Sure, we acknowledge that the realities of healthcare costs and insurance companies might limit our options, but there is always a sense that when something is truly, truly needed, we can get it done. Read more in Medscape.

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One in 10 solid organ transplant recipients develops bacteremia 1 year after transplant

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By Caitlyn Stulpin

Nearly 10% of solid organ transplant recipients may develop bacteremia in the first year after transplant, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

“There are limited contemporary robust data on the epidemiology of bacteremia during the first fragile year after a solid organ transplantation,” Dionysios Neofytos, MD, specialist in the division of infectious diseases at the University Hospital of Geneva, told Healio. Read more in Healio.

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GIVING HEART

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A new procedure for donating hearts and other organs is saving lives. But for some it challenges the definition of death

By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel

On a chilly holiday Monday in January 2020, a medical milestone passed largely unnoticed. In a New York City operating room, surgeons gently removed the heart from a 43-year-old man who had died and shuttled it steps away to a patient in desperate need of a new one.

More than 3500 people in the United States receive a new heart each year. But this case was different—the first of its kind in the country. Read the full article in Science.

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Teen Taking on Life After Intestine-Liver-Pancreas Transplant

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By Lynn Nichols

For five years, Diana Topete couldn’t freely eat. She rarely had the chance to enjoy her favorite foods—seafood, tacos, ice cream—with her family and friends. That’s because she didn’t have any intestines.

Instead of eating, Diana was fed intravenously. For 12 hours each day, she was hooked up to parenteral nutrition, or TPN, which delivers liquid nutrients through a central line or semipermanent IV. There’s no pleasure in it, but it kept her alive. 
Read the full story in Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.

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