By Katie Chen
Pediatric Nurses Week is a time to celebrate and reflect on the contributions nurses make to the pediatric community and their families.
Gerri James, RN, BSN, CCTC, manager of the Pediatric Kidney Transplant Program at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, is often the first person parents hear from when their children are referred for a transplant. Read more from Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.
By Julienne Jenkins
Nevaeh Quinn of Winnemucca, Nevada, got the thrill of a lifetime when she received the news that a generous, anonymous donor was gifting her tickets to see Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour concert. A social worker at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, Gianna Nasrah, LCSW, wanted to do something special for her.
Nevaeh is an amazing 14-year-old girl that has spent a lot of her life in medical settings,” Nasrah said. “She has recently been in and out of the hospital often, and I think my hope is that this gives her a sense of normalcy and rejuvenates her hope for the future.” Read the full story from Stanford Medicine Children’s Health.
Jailyn Mason and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh had been in this situation before.
There was a kidney available for 9-year-old Jailyn, who also needs a small bowel transplant. To get the transplant, Jailyn had to travel to Pittsburgh from her home in Texas within a matter of hours – too fast to arrange flights on a commercial airline. Read the full story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Children receiving maintenance dialysis have lower rates of pediatric transplant waitlisting and kidney transplantation at facilities that are for-profit rather than nonprofit, according to an analysis of data from the US Renal Data System.
Among 13,333 pediatric patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) who initiated dialysis during 2000-2018, 3618 (27%) attended for-profit facilities, 7907 (59%) attended nonprofit facilities, and 1748 (13%) switched profit status. Read more in Renal & Urology News.
Among recipients of pediatric kidney transplantation, the prevalence of posttransplant anemia (PTA) ranges from 22% to 85%. PTA is defined as early (within 6 months of following transplant) or late (>6 months following transplant). In Frontiers in Pediatrics, Anne Kouri, MD, MS, and colleagues in the department of pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, describe the etiologies and management of PTA [doi:10.3398/fped.2022.929504]. Read more in Nephrology Times.
“She has so much more energy and is eating so much more. She is also moving and walking more than she ever did.”
Four-year-old Stella Allison has always loved telling jokes and playing dress up.
With energy that is contagious and a smile that lights up a room, her mom Kyley Barthlow says Stella has grown into a high-spirited and chatty child – but was born a real fighter.
Read the full story from Seattle Children’s.
Following solid-organ transplantation, the primary aim of care is preventing allosensitization. Despite potent immunosuppression, nonadherence often disrupts treatment, resulting in rejection. Among recipients of kidney transplant, the strongest predictors of allograft failure are nonadherence and subsequent antibody or T-cell-mediated rejection (AMR and TCMR, respectively). Read more in Nephrology Times.
What happened between two families at Stanford Children’s Health bonded them forever.
While awaiting kidney transplants for their young boys, the two families—one from Hawaii, one from California—became friends. Families often become close during the long hours of dialysis, but they don’t often hear the hopeful news that a donor kidney might be a match on the same day. Read the full story from Stanford Children’s Health here.