Blog Posts
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Facebook Helping Find Organ Donors
- 3rd Jan 2012
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Early on when Facebook was created it was used to find old friends and stay in contact with people we care but didn’t necessarily have time to call or meet. Nowadays it is used to save people’s lives. Social media have expanded their role and now it goes beyond imagination. Patients waiting for organ transplant now turn toward Facebook in order to increase their pool of potential organ donors. Most of the living donors are giving one of their kidneys.
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Role of Transplant Coordinator
- 21st Nov 2011
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A transplant coordinator has a really important role in the transplant process. There are three types of coordinators: pre-transplant, inpatient and post-transplant. I will explain the role for all of them but will put an emphasis on the role of post-transplant coordinator since this is what I do. Pre-Transplant The pre-transplant coordinator is responsible for helping the process of putting patients on the wait list. They are usually responsible to enter patients’ info in the database (height, disease, labs, test
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Grandpa Could Become a Living Kidney Donor
- 31st Oct 2011
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It is now proven that people over the age of 70 years old can safely become a living organ donor for kidney transplant. A study that will come out in the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology is showing there is no more risk for elderly to become organ donor than younger donors. The investigators have studied more than 200 living kidney donor over the age of 70 and compared them with healthy people of the same age. The
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Animals to be Used for Organ Transplants
- 24th Oct 2011
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Pig Cornea According to a group a scientists from Pittsburgh University, pigs are to be used sooner than later for human organ transplantation. In fact they are planning to start using the cornea from genetically modified pigs into human with poor eye sights. As you may already know, pig valve is already being used in human with much success for years. In order to have the “organ” accepted by the human body, the pig protein galactosyltranferase (you don’t need to
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Steve Jobs Received a Liver Transplant per the Rules
- 10th Oct 2011
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I have read a lot of misinformation lately about Steve Jobs regarding his 2009 liver transplant. Even at the time it was make public a couple of years ago, that misinformation was coming out. A lot of people are saying that Steve Jobs received a liver transplant by bypassing the waiting list. I will tell you that it is impossible because the rules are so strict. A transplant center can be put on probation or even be shut down by
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How to Choose your Organ Transplant Center
- 4th Oct 2011
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It may not be easy to decide where to have your organ transplant with all the options you can find out there. Every hospital promotes itself as the best in its category (you have heard that before, right?!). The patients who live in a large metropolitan area are lucky because they may have access to several hospitals close to home. Kidney transplant is the surgery that is the most performed and has the most widespread locations. Hospitals are competing for
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Gastric Reflux Surgery Helps Lung Transplant Patients
- 21st Sep 2011
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If you are a lung transplant patient there are good chances you may eventually need an anti-reflux surgery. The name of that surgery is Nissen Fundoplication. For some lung transplant recipients this could be a life saving surgery in the long run because the purpose of it is to save the lung function. The University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine reports that out of 43 of their patients who have undergone this anti-reflux surgery, nearly all of them improved their
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The ABCs of a Good Outcome after Organ Transplant
- 15th Sep 2011
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There are plenty of statistics available about organ transplantation; survival per age, survival per organ, survival per sex, etc. The vast majority of the patients are alive after 1 year but are they really doing well? Are they really living their lives to the fullest? What are they doing to live as long as possible? The most successful stories I have witnessed are where the organ recipients take matter into their own hands and do something. They go to rehab
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First Lung Transplant in US Using Ex Vivo Perfusion
- 10th Sep 2011
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The University of Maryland Medical Center was the first center in the US to perform a lung transplant using ex-vivo perfusion. The procedure is used to make the lungs more suitable for organ transplantation. Only 15-20% of all donors end up giving their lungs due to several factors. This is a very low number compared to kidneys and liver who are used a lot more. The lungs are very susceptible to their environment especially in a context of a brain
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Facts about Organ Donation
- 7th Sep 2011
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Becoming an organ donor is the single best action someone can take to be remembered after passing. In the United States about 1 person out of 4 is a registered organ donor with their state. In reality, more people may be willing to sign that card but they don’t do it due to a lack of time, motivation or whatever else. Even if they do, sometimes they don’t talk about it to their family so when time comes to donate