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U.S. on pace to top 40,000 transplants in a single year for first time

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“In just the first half of 2021, 21,061 organ transplants have been performed in the U.S. according to data from United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which serves as the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network under federal contract.

Organ donation from deceased donors is up 15% over last year. There were 900 more deceased donors — people who provided one or more organs to save and enhance the lives of others — between January 1 and June 30 of 2021 than there were during the same period in 2020. The drop in donors caused by the pandemic beginning in the middle of March last year was offset enough by high numbers early in the year that there were still 242 more donors in the first half of 2020 than in the first half of 2019.

Organ transplants from deceased donors are also up — by 11%. A total of 17,821 deceased donor transplants were performed in the U.S. in the first half of 2021 compared to 15,933 in the first six months of last year. 2020 marked the 10th consecutive record breaking year for organ donation from deceased donors and the 8th in a row for deceased donor transplants.”

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Kidney Transplant Outcomes Improved Over Past Quarter-Century

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“Things have looked up for U.S. kidney transplant recipients over the past few decades, according to a review article.

In adult kidney transplant recipients, the total number of transplants from living and deceased donors in the U.S. jumped from 45,008 in 1996-1999 up to 76,885 in 2016-2019, reported Sundaram Hariharan, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and colleagues.

This uptick was largely driven by a rise in the number of transplants from deceased kidney donors, from 29,823 in 1996 to 53,139 in 2019, they stated in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

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Equity means providing a transplant for every single patient that needs one

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“Recently, I joined UNOS President-Elect Jerry McCauley, M.D. at a meeting organized by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) focused on equity. We were honored to share UNOS’ work in this space and lend our voices to this vital national discussion – a discussion we look forward to continuing.

UNOS is acutely attuned to issues of equity. As the mission-driven non-profit serving as the nation’s transplant system, we work with our community partners to ensure equitable policies and outcomes in multiple ways, including:”

Read the full article, here.

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USC Stem Cell scientists make big progress in building mini-kidneys

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“A team of scientists at the Keck School of Medicine of USC has created what could be a key building block for assembling a synthetic kidney. In a new study in Nature Communications, Zhongwei Li and his colleagues describe how they can generate rudimentary kidney structures, known as organoids, that resemble the collecting duct system that helps maintain the body’s fluid and pH balance by concentrating and transporting urine.

“Our progress in creating new types of kidney organoids provides powerful tools for not only understanding development and disease, but also finding new treatments and regenerative approaches for patients,” said Li, the study’s corresponding author and an assistant professor of medicine, and of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine.”

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Despite COVID-19, Cedars-Sinai Hits New Transplant Record

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“This spring, anesthesiologist Jennifer Cutler, MD, was looking forward to a weekend relaxing with her husband and two teenaged children when she got the call – she was urgently needed to oversee anesthesiology for not one, but two, liver transplants at Cedars-Sinai.

Cutler, who enjoys spending her weekends going on long runs, catching up on her to-do list and savoring family dinners, dropped everything to come in to work. She wasn’t “on call,” per se, but Cutler said that when she and her fellow anesthesiologists are needed for a transplant surgery, they go.

“Even when we’re not on call, we just all pitch in and get the cases done,” Cutler said. “We have always had an attitude of teamwork.”

That weekend, surgeons from the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center and Smidt Heart Institute performed a whopping 11 transplant surgeries in a single weekend. They performed one heart transplant, two liver transplants, two dual kidney/pancreas transplants, and six kidney transplants (including one pediatric kidney transplant).”

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Making transplants without a lifelong regimen of anti-rejection drugs a reality at UCLA Health

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“When he was a medical trainee, UCLA Health nephrologist Erik Lum, MD, was part of a team at Stanford University exploring how to create “tolerance” in kidney-transplant patients — a process that encourages the body to welcome the new organ without the necessity for a lifelong regimen of anti-rejection drugs.

Now, Dr. Lum is among the leaders of a multidisciplinary team making transplant tolerance a reality at UCLA Health. Two kidney transplants have been performed thus far under the advanced protocol, making UCLA Health one of only five medical centers in the world capable of the groundbreaking approach hailed as “the Holy Grail” of transplantation.

“It requires a lot of interplay between different divisions,” Dr. Lum says. “To me, it really demonstrates the strength of a place like UCLA. You can’t do this just anywhere. It’s a huge collaboration.”

The protocol brings together a broad range of specialties, including nephrology, urology, hematology, radiation oncology and others, for a series of treatments that prime the transplant recipient’s body to accept the new organ.”

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Home is where the heart is: This CNN Hero is housing transplant patients near their hospitals

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“Twelve years ago, Ava Kaufman was fighting for her life. Now, thanks to a donor heart and successful organ transplant, she’s alive — and saving others.

“My life changed on a dime,” said Kaufman, who was a professional dancer and black belt in taekwondo when an autoimmune disease went undiagnosed and wiped out her muscular system. She ultimately ended up on life support in intensive care with organ failure.

“I went from living this big life to not knowing how I was going to survive.”

In what she calls a series of small miracles, Kaufman was given a second chance at life.”

Read the full story, here.

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Man’s Sudden Heart Failure Led to US’ First Artificial Heart Transplant

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“Rachel Moore thought her husband Matthew was pulling one of his usual stunts. The 39-year-old, who’d won Rachel over almost 14 years before with his sly wit, suddenly slumped over in his hospital recliner at Duke University Hospital, where he’d arrived June 15 expecting to undergo heart bypass surgery

But when she saw her husband’s tongue sticking out and his eyes dilate, “I started screaming,” Rachel, a nurse, told Insider.

For 45 minutes, clinicians performed chest compressions. They shocked his heart 16 times. Finally, he stabilized, but his life remained in danger for weeks as machines — and five more shocks — kept him alive.”

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Pharma CEO Faces Personal Fight for a New Breed of Organ Donors

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“A doctor at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., had just told Rothblatt and her wife, Bina, that the couple’s youngest daughter, 9-year-old Jenesis, had a rare medical condition that likely gave her three years to live. The arteries between Jenesis’s heart and lungs had narrowed, choking off oxygen and placing an unsustainable burden on her heart as it struggled to send blood through her thinning blood vessels, like trying to push water through a hose with a kink in it. The condition, known as pulmonary arterial hypertension, was progressive, and there were no approved treatments, short of a lung transplant—almost unheard-of in children.”

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NKF Publishes Recommendations to Move Thousands of Patients from Dialysis to Transplant

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“The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) releases today a position paper developed by 16 experts in nephrology and transplantation from 13 institutions that plots a path for research and innovation to address the most pressing barriers to kidney transplant access, organ availability, and long-term allograft survival in the United States. 

This ambitious agenda seeks to direct research investment to optimize equity, efficiency, and patient-centered outcomes and maximize the benefits of transplantation in our country. Today, while nearly 100,000 people are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, only 22,817 Americans received a kidney transplant in 2020.

“While kidney transplantation provides the best treatment option for kidney failure to thousands of patients each year, the goal of universal access to this treatment remains elusive,” said lead author Krista L. Lentine, MD, PhD, Saint Louis University Center for Abdominal Transplantation. “Addressing the priorities outlined in this research agenda has the potential to transform kidney patient care by expanding opportunities for safe living donation, improving waitlist access and transplant readiness, maximizing use of available deceased donor organs, and extending graft longevity.”

To assess the knowledge gaps amenable to more research, NKF convened an expert panel to develop a research agenda aimed at advancing access to kidney transplantation for all patients who could benefit, with attention to reducing/eliminating racial and ethnic disparities and supporting the goal of “one transplant for life” for organ recipients.”

Read full article, here.

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