• How to Choose your Organ Transplant Center

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    • 4th Oct 2011

    • 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

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    • 21st Sep 2011

    • 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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  • First Lung Transplant in US Using Ex Vivo Perfusion

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    • 10th Sep 2011

    • 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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  • What is it the age limit for organ transplant?

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    • 23rd Aug 2011

    • If I was asked that question 10-15 years ago the answer would have been different than today.   It was safe to say that most transplant center did not do any transplantation on patients older than 60 years old.  These days you have a chance to become an organ recipient as old as 70 years and even a little more depending on the hospital you choose. Usually, for younger patients, it is almost a no brainer to be accepted by a

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  • Organ Transplant and Skin Cancer

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    • 5th Jul 2011

    • Skin cancer is a major problem after organ transplant. The longer a patient lives the higher the incidence is. Since transplant patients are living longer than ever before, we are seeing more skin cancer and sometimes as early as after the first year. People, it is not a joke when your doctors or transplant coordinators warns you of using precautions under the sun.  Some studies also show heart and kidney transplant recipients being more at risk than the other organs.

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  • Could Pulmonary Fibrosis finally be Treated?

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    • 29th Jun 2011

    • This is what researchers at Duke University in North Carolina are suggesting.  They simply need to find a way to cut off the supply of sugar to the invasive cells that create fibrosis in the lungs.  Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), just like its name mentions it, has no known cause.  But the pulmonologists do know one thing though: it kills people.  On average, after a diagnosis of IPF is given, the survival rate is only 3 years. The lungs are

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  • Lung Transplant and Bronchoscopy: How to Diagnose a Rejection

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    • 6th Jun 2011

    • What is a Bronchoscopy? Patients that have received a lung transplant know too well what a bronchoscopy is.  For the ones on the waiting list who never had one; don’t worry you will get to know.  A bronchoscopy is usually done by a pulmonologist (lung doctor) and consist a small camera at the end of a long probe narrow enough to fit through the airway.  It can be inserted through the nose or mouth and also through the breathing tube

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  • Top 10 Mistakes Patients Make After Organ Transplant (part 2)

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    • 5th Jun 2011

    • Yesterday, I posted the first 5 main mistakes transplant patients make. Today I will present the remaining 5 mistakes that we observe and could shorten your survival post-transplant. 6. Not exercising. Every single patients (actually this is good for everybody, including me!) should enrolled in a structured program of physical conditioning, providing that their physician has cleared them to do so. A structured environment is much better since you will have someone pushing in your back to have you take

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  • Top 10 Mistakes Patients Make After Organ Transplant (Part 1)

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    • 4th Jun 2011

    • It takes about 2-3 months for an average patient to recover from a solid organ transplantation and be able to say “I start feeling great!”. The first several weeks after surgery new patients call me, as a transplant coordinator, 2-3 times a week and most of the time it is due to anxiety. After that 3 months threshold, providing everything is good, we barely hear from some of the patients anymore. In a way, it is a good thing because

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  • Lung Transplant: How Long Will I be Waiting

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    • 3rd Jun 2011

    • The first question that comes into people’s mind when they consider organ transplant is how long they will have to wait.  There are so many factors affecting the wait time that it is very hard to say.  For lung transplant, the main ones are type of disease, patient’s size and the transplant center itself.  Also lung is the organ with the one of lowest wait time in organ transplant.  Relatively less people are waiting for lungs versus the number of available

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