Donor lungs from individuals infected with hepatitis C have been successfully transplanted into 10 patients at Toronto General Hospital (TG), University Health Network (UHN).
In a small study of ambulatory surgical centers across the country, Johns Hopkins quality care researchers found that publicly listing the prices of common operations, such as uncomplicated labor and delivery and tonsillectomies, generally increased business, revenue and patient satisfaction.
The Chronic Pancreatitis and Autologous Islet Cell Transplant Program, created by Chirag S. Desai, MD, is helping patients improve their quality of life by eliminating severe pain and reducing or ending the use of narcotic pain medications, while preventing brittle diabetes.
Thirteen years after the first successful face transplant, US trauma surgeons should be aware of the current role of facial transplantation for patients with severe facial disfigurement – including evidence that the final appearance and functioning are superior to that provided by conventional reconstructive surgery. That's the message of a special update on 'Face Transplantation Today' in the June issue of The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery, Edited by Mutaz B. Habal, MD, and published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
By instructing key immune system cells to accept transplanted insulin-producing islets, researchers have opened a potentially new pathway for treating type 1 diabetes. If the approach is ultimately successful in humans, it could allow type 1 diabetes to be treated without the long-term complications of immune system suppression.
Among organ transplant patients, those receiving new lungs face one of the highest rates of organ failure and death compared with people undergoing heart, kidney and liver transplants. One of the culprits is inflammation that damages the newly transplanted lung.
The Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation has added Loyola University Medical Center to its Care Center Network of centers with expertise in accurately diagnosing and treating patients with pulmonary fibrosis.
An investigational technology called ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) potentially could increase the organ supply for lung transplants by providing a more informed evaluation of lungs that otherwise would be deemed ineligible for transplant
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Northwestern University have uncovered cells that flow into and harm the lung soon after transplant. The resulting dysfunction is the leading cause of early death after lung transplantation. The discovery, in mice, may lead to drug therapies that target the destructive cells.
The researchers examined 17 years of transplantation records and found no significant change in the recipients’ chance of survival when the organ donation came from victims of drug intoxication. The study publishes online on May 17 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Lung transplant patients who showed evidence of alcohol use before their transplants spent more time in the hospital and on the ventilator, a Loyola University Chicago Study has found. Researchers said abstaining from alcohol prior to lung transplants could improve outcomes.
Dr. Jean Roy hopes to someday cure patients with multiple myeloma, one of the most common (and still incurable) bone marrow cancers, thanks to a new molecule called UM171 discovered by scientists at Université de Montréal.
Indiana University researchers are using the school's cutting-edge 3D bioprinting technology to print organ models from genetically engineered pig cells.
At 4 months old, Raegen was diagnosed with congenital nephrotic syndrome.Early on in Raegen Allard’s life, her mother, Francisca Allard, noticed something wasn’t quite right with her beautiful daughter. Raegen would seem upset after she ate and her stomach was enlarged. She also had a bruise around her belly button, which worried Allard further.
Researchers at the National Eye Institute have discovered cellular mechanisms that help the 13-lined ground squirrel survive hibernation. Their findings could be a step toward extending storage of human donor tissues awaiting transplantation and protecting traumatic brain injury patients who undergo induced hypothermia. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings were published in the May 3 issue of Cell.
Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with end-stage heart failure seeking OHT and LVAD implantation will be drastically affected if the proposed cuts are implemented, according to UAB research.
Organ transplant patients and donors shared their extraordinary stories during Loyola Medicine's 27th annual Candle-lighting Ceremony. Among the speakers were a pastor who gave a kidney to a member of his church and a daughter who saved her mother's life by giving up a part of her liver.
When concert pianist Misha Dichter developed a debilitating condition affecting his hands, it was life-shattering. But after two successful surgeries, the world-renowned virtuoso recently returned to Carnegie Hall for his first major solo performance in New York in almost two decades.
Doctors at the University of Illinois Hospital have cured seven adult patients of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder primarily affecting the black community, using stem cells from donors previously thought to be incompatible, thanks to a new transplant treatment protocol.
A new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows an investigational drug prevents graft-versus-host disease, a dangerous side effect of stem cell transplantation.
Many soldiers returning from combat bear visible scars, or even lost limbs, caused by blasts from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. However, some servicemen also return with debilitating hidden injuries -- the loss of all or part of their genitals. Now, the Johns Hopkins reconstructive surgery team that performed the country's first bilateral arm transplant in a wounded warrior has successfully performed the first total penis and scrotum transplant in the world.
Dr. Giuliano Testa, principal investigator of the uterine transplant clinical trial, has been named to Time Magazine's ‘TIME 100’ – Time’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
• Megan Gagliardi was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy at 18 years old.
• Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the heart’s ability to pump blood is decreased because the left ventricle — the heart’s main pumping chamber — is enlarged and weakened.
• Gagliardi received a heart transplant on her 19th birthday and is doing well six years later.
For decades, transplant experts have observed that liver transplant recipients often need less anti-rejection medication, known as immunosuppressive drugs, than recipients of other solid organs. Similarly, when patients receive a multiple-organ transplant that includes the liver along with any other organ, they need less immunosuppressive medication and have less incidence of rejection even if they are highly sensitive to cellular bad actors, known as antigens, from the donor organs.
• Among 655 healthcare providers at dialysis clinics in the United States, 19% were aware of racial disparities in waitlisting.
• Although a quarter of dialysis facilities had >5% racial difference in waitlisting within their own facilities, only 5% of the providers were aware of the disparity at their own facilities.
Adaptable Ortho Innovations, LLC, a novel medical device startup rooted in a surgeon-engineer collaboration, earned second place recognition in the inaugural Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS) Business Plan Competition.
New research out of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and The Ohio State University has identified rare variants in a number of novel genes that may help improve risk prediction and prognosis for patients undergoing BMT.
Experts in pediatric kidney disease have published a new staging system to help doctors better predict the length of time until a child with chronic kidney disease will need to undergo a kidney transplant or start receiving dialysis. Although this type of prognostic guide exists for adults, this is the first such tool specific to children.
• The risk of death due to infectious causes after kidney transplantation in Finland has dropped by half since the 1990s.
• Common bacterial infections remain the most frequent cause of infection-related deaths among transplant recipients.
Krista Lentine, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of internal medicine at Saint Louis University, will receive a prestigious award from the National Kidney Foundation for her research and advocacy for living kidney donation.
By modifying a muscle transplant operation, Johns Hopkins surgeons report they are able to restore authentic facial expressions of joy -- wide and even smiles -- to selected patients with one-sided facial muscle paralysis due to birth defects, stroke, tumors or Bell’s palsy.
Updated statistics from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration out this month show that over the previous year, there has been an increase in cases of an uncommon form of cancer associated with breast implants. Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey’s Andrew Evens, DO, MSc, FACP, shares some insight.
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and the University of Southern California (USC) have demonstrated the successful implementation of a prosthetic system that uses a person’s own memory patterns to facilitate the brain’s ability to encode and recall memory.
• Disadvantaged patients with kidney failure who received guidance from a trained navigator with a degree in social work were more likely to be eventually put on the transplant waiting list than control patients.
• The difference in waitlisting among intervention vs. control patients became evident only after 500 days, however, at which point intervention patients were 3.3 times more likely to be waitlisted after 500 days.
The drug, regadenoson, is already commonly used to image cardiac patients’ hearts. But the UVA research suggests it could be put to another, lifesaving purpose.
A UT Southwestern study in mice provides new clues about how a class of anti-rejection drugs used after organ transplants may also slow the progression of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.
Highlights
• Between 2005 and 2015, the unadjusted rate of living kidney donation in the United States was 30.1 and 19.3 per million population in women and men, respectively.
• After adjusting for differences in age, race, the incidence of kidney failure, and geographic factors, the incidence of donation was 44% higher in women.
• Over time, the incidence of donation was stable in women but declined in men. The decline was most marked in men from lower income groups.
In a small study, doctors at Johns Hopkins have successfully transplanted 10 hepatitis C-infected kidneys into patients without hepatitis C and prevented the patients from becoming infected by hepatitis C. The success of these transplants could mean more organs being available for the nearly 100,000 people in the U.S. currently waiting for a kidney transplant.
UHN now largest adult transplant program in North America. University Health Network’s Multi-Organ Transplant Program reached a milestone of completing 639 adult transplants in 2017, ranking first in volume for adult transplants in North America.
Each year in the U.S., more than 40,000 patients need a liver transplant because of complications associated with cirrhosis and liver failure. Alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) alone accounts for nearly 30 percent of all liver transplants, yet up to 50 percent of patients with alcoholism return to drinking within five years of undergoing a liver transplant. Many transplant centers now require a minimum of six months of alcohol abstinence prior to placing candidates on the United Organ Network Sharing waiting list. This pilot study examined the use of text messaging as an alcohol relapse-prevention intervention for patients with ALD scheduled to undergo a liver transplant.
A pancreas transplant cured Anthony Law of his life-threatening "brittle" diabetes. Before his transplant, Mr. Law had extreme swings in blood sugar levels. His family had to wake him up every two hours to ensure his sugars were in a normal range. Today, he is off insulin and his blood sugars are steady.
Michael “Shawn” Findley, a 44-year-old amputee with a wiring harness emerging from his upper left arm, is working with a UT Southwestern team to help change the way robotic hand biofeedback occurs. Ultimately, he hopes this research may lead to the closest thing to feeling in the hands of every amputee.
To expand access to life-saving liver transplants for those in need, NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine have unveiled a new living donor liver transplant program. It performed its first such transplant with success in late January.
Nur Hossain, a graduate research assistant from the University of Oklahoma, was named the 2018 Southern Plain’s Transportation Center Outstanding Student of the Year – one of the most prestigious awards given by the SPTC under the National University Transportation Center program.