For close to 50 years, Tampa General Hospital has been a national leader in life-saving organ transplantation. In 2022, the TGH Transplant Institute performed 682 transplants, a 20% increase in the number of procedures over 2021. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), the national rate of transplants grew by 3.7% in 2022 over 2021. Read more in the West Orlando News.
Existing and emerging biotech advances are transforming the way we preserve and transport donated organs. While their methods may vary, all share a common end goal: saving more lives.
National Donate Life Month, celebrated every April, is here once again. It’s a time to acknowledge and encourage the gift of life that organ donation provides. Since the first successful organ transplant in 1954, countless lives have been saved through transplants. Just last year, surgeons performed a record number of transplants — more than 40,000, roughly 60 percent of which were kidneys alone.
But there are some 106,000 people currently on the national transplant waiting list and, with another person being added every nine minutes, this need outpaces supply. Every day, an estimated 17 people die waiting for an available organ. And lack of supply isn’t the only barrier to transplants; viability of the organs is another issue. Thousands of donated organs go to waste each year because they don’t reach a potential recipient in time.
Read the full story.
A patient with disabilities can be denied life-saving organ transplants because of those disabilities, and parents often fear the worst. Families have won protections in many states — including 14 in the last year.
But more than three decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act — which prohibits discrimination based on a person’s disability — became federal law, advocates say inequities persist in health care. Read more.