Blog Posts
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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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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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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
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Organ Transplants Statistics Made Simple
- 30th Jun 2011
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Where should I have my lung transplant? How long am I gonna wait for my kidney transplant? How long am I going to live after my heart transplant? Who does the most liver transplant? Those questions are asked by pretty much every patients waiting for organ transplantation. If you live in a major US city you may have the choice to pick your transplant center just like choosing a dentist. On the other hand if you live more in a remote area,
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Liver Transplant and Obesity: Big Difference in Statistics
- 26th Jun 2011
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A compilation of data at the University of Maryland in Baltimore shows that being obese after liver transplant decrease your chance of survival significantly. Dr Fayed and his group performed 285 liver transplants between 2000 and 2008 representing an average of 35 surgeries every year. The patients with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30 had their survival rate threatened because of their obesity. BMI According to the National Institutes of Health, a BMI of 30 and greater
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Organ Transplants by the Numbers
- 20th Jun 2011
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Every day we hear in the media and read on the web that so many people are on a waiting list for organ transplants. What do those numbers exactly represent? I will break them down by different organs and compare trends over the last decade so we can see how bad it is or how good it got. The latest data available that I will use are from 2000-2009. I know that we are in 2011 but 2010 almost just
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Kidney Transplant and Pain Medicine
- 8th Jun 2011
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An interesting study came out at the American Transplant Congress conference held last month in Philadelphia, Pa. Patients who were chronic opioid (pain medicine) user had a lower graft survival and higher mortality rate after kidney transplant. The study was performed at the University of Michigan with the 1064 patients who received kidney transplant between 2004 and 2008. Of that number, about 10% self-reported as being chronic opioid user (COU) before transplant. “Pretransplant chronic opioid use is associated with worse
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Kidney Transplant Following Other Organ Transplant: What do Statistics Say?
- 8th Jun 2011
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With the advance of medicine and better understanding of everything related to transplantation, more patients live longer than ever after transplantation these days. Drugs are better, patient management is more efficient and over the years more and more people have received an organ transplant. The main problem with patients living longer is they may eventually need a kidney transplant. Their native kidneys have been relentlessly exposed to drugs that are hard on them. The transplant drugs, especially prograf and cyclosporine