Feature Channels: Transplantation

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At Johns Hopkins Hospital, transplants mean new life for those with no other match and for nurses who couldn’t bear to stand by.

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Mount Sinai researchers find variation in key gene in donor may accelerate scarring of transplanted kidney once in recipient

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Ice poses major impediments to winter travel, accumulating on car windshields and airplane wings and causing countless unsuspecting pedestrians to dramatically lose their balance. A team of researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) has developed a new way to prevent ice buildup on surfaces like airplane wings, finding inspiration in an unusual source: the poison dart frog.

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• Living organ donors who later need kidney transplants have much shorter waiting times, and they receive higher quality kidneys compared with similar people on the waiting list who were not organ donors.

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Mrs. Linss’ medical problem was diagnosed as primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), a disease in which the bile ducts are damaged, causing bile to build up in the liver.

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The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found living kidney donors were more likely to be diagnosed with gestational hypertension (high blood pressure) or preeclampsia than non-donors.

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Patients with end-stage lung disease due to systemic sclerosis should not simply be denied lung transplantation because of short- and long-term survival concerns due to extra-pulmonary factors, according to new research findings presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in Boston.

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Among kidney transplant recipients, a 3-month course of the antibiotic levofloxacin following transplantation did not prevent the major complication known as BK virus from appearing in the urine. The intervention was associated with an increased risk of adverse events such as bacterial resistance, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at the American Society of Nephrology’s annual Kidney Week meeting.

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The majority of individuals in the United States are not eligible to donate a kidney, even if they wanted to.

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Transplanted kidneys may not function long-term if they come from donors with variants in a particular gene.

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A new treatment regimen for hepatitis C, the most common cause of liver cancer and transplantation, has produced results that will transform treatment protocols for transplant patients, according to research published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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A surgical team at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre led by internationally-acclaimed cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Vivek Rao, has successfully implanted a novel mechanical device, the HeartMate IIITM, into a patient with advanced heart failure.

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The case is one of several firsts to occur at University of Utah Health Care's revamped transplant program over the past year.

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Johns Hopkins and other cancer researchers report that a very short course of a chemotherapy drug, called cyclophosphamide, not only can prevent a life-threatening immune response in some bone marrow transplant recipients, but also can eliminate such patients’ need for the usual six months of immune suppression medicines commonly prescribed to prevent severe forms of this immune response. Patients receive cyclophosphamide for two days after their bone marrow transplant, in addition to two other chemotherapy drugs given before the transplant.

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Researchers at UC San Francisco and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, may have found a predictor for a disorder affecting kidney transplant recipients that can accelerate organ failure, a discovery that eventually could allow for customized therapies and improved patient selection for transplant.

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Patients receiving lungs from donors whose cause of death was asphyxiation or drowning have similar outcomes and long-term survival as patients receiving lungs from traditional donors

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Every day, organ transplant patients around the world take a drug called rapamycin to keep their immune systems from rejecting their new kidneys and hearts. New research suggests that the same drug could help brain tumor patients by boosting the effect of new immune-based therapies.

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• Among kidney transplant recipients, persistent infection with BK virus does not have a negative immediate-term impact on patient or kidney survival, but infected patients are more likely to develop antibodies against their kidney transplants. • Such donor-specific antibodies are known to be detrimental to the survival of transplanted organs.

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Loyola University Medical Center recently performed its 750th heart transplant, a milestone that places the hospital among an elite handful of heart transplant centers.

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The liver provides critical functions, such as ridding the body of toxins. Its failure can be deadly, and there are few options for fixing it. But scientists now report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a way to potentially inject stem cells from tonsils, a body part we don't need, to repair damaged livers — all without surgery.

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Cedars-Sinai physicians and scientists are testing a novel, human cell based, bioartificial liver support system for patients with acute liver failure, often a fatal diagnosis.

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A new molecule, the first of its kind, allows for the multiplication of stem cells in a unit of cord blood. Umbilical cord stem cells are used for transplants aimed at curing a number of blood-related diseases, including leukemia, myeloma and lymphoma. For many patients this therapy comprises a treatment of last resort.

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The liver transplant team at Mayo Clinic in Florida has found, based on 12 years of experience, that more than half of patients receiving a new liver can be “fast-tracked” to return to a surgical ward room following their transplant, bypassing a one- or two-day stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

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• Among new dialysis patients, the most frequently cited concerns were that patients felt they were doing fine on dialysis and felt uncomfortable asking someone to donate a kidney. • Older age was linked with having high health-related or psychosocial concerns, as was being a woman, being less educated, and having more comorbid illnesses. • Patients having such concerns had less than half the chance of getting listed for a transplant than those without them.

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University Hospitals Case Medical Center doctors build a new windpipe for woman with ear cartilage that was first lengthened in her arm.

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Working with human-sized pig kidneys, researchers at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have developed the most successful method to date to keep blood vessels in the new organs open and flowing with blood. This is a significant hurdle in the quest to engineer replacement kidneys for patients.

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• Between 1999 and 2010, lower income regions in the US consistently had lower rates of living donation compared with higher income populations. • The difference in living donation rates between lower and higher income regions was much larger in recent years than it was in the past.

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Research derived from early national experience of liver transplantation has shown that deceased donor liver transplants offered recipients better survival rates than living donor liver transplants, making them the preferred method of transplantation for most physicians. Now, the first data-driven study in over a decade disputes this notion. Penn Medicine researchers found that living donor transplant outcomes are superior to those found with deceased donors with appropriate donor selection and when surgeries are performed at an experienced center. The research is published this week in the journal Hepatology.

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Healthy living kidney donors often face pointless post-donation hurdles when seeking or changing health or life insurance, according to results of a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers.

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A study that included about 15,000 physicians found that they were more likely to be registered as an organ donor compared to the general public, according to a study in the July 16 issue of JAMA.

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Among patients with a severe, life-threatening type of sclerosis, treatment with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), compared to intravenous infusion of the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide, was associated with an increased treatment-related risk of death in the first year, but better long-term survival, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.