Organ Donation News and Research

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Skin cell to liver cell shows promise for genetic liver disease

In a new scientific breakthrough, researchers have taken skin cells from a patient with liver disease and turned them into replacement liver cells. Although the procedure is years before it can be used in humans, but if approved, it could launch a new era of personalized therapies for serious genetic disorders.

13 Oct 2011

New organ donation rules under consideration

Surgeons retrieving organs for transplant just after a donor's heart stops beating would no longer have to wait at least two minutes to be sure the heart doesn't spontaneously start beating again under new rules being considered by the group that coordinates organ allocation in the United States.

21 Sep 2011

First Edition: September 20, 2011

In today's headlines, details and analysis of President Barack Obama's debt-reduction plan, which would trim health programs by $320 billion and links such entitlement trims to new taxes.

20 Sep 2011

University of Maryland surgeons transplant first lungs treated with experimental repair process

Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center have transplanted the first lungs treated in the United States with an experimental repair process before transplantation. The procedure is part of a five-center national clinical research trial to evaluate the efficacy of repairing, before transplant, lungs that might otherwise have been passed over as unsuitable for organ donation.

8 Sep 2011

Legal, ethical and cultural barriers to child organ donations

Clinicians from a leading UK children's hospital have called for European countries to change the way they tackle the shortage of organ donations from children, after a review, published in the September issue of Acta Paediatrica, found a large number of legal, ethical and cultural barriers.

8 Sep 2011

Wiley-Blackwell, The Hastings Center partner to publish leading journal on bioethics

Wiley-Blackwell, the Scientific, Technical, Medical, and Scholarly (STMS) publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is pleased to announce a new partnership with The Hastings Center, to publish the Hastings Center Report, one of the leading journals in the field of bioethics.

5 Aug 2011

'Rule of rescue' often prevails in ICU: Study

High stakes life and death decisions are made every day by doctors and nurses in critical care units, but increasingly critical care clinicians are also tasked with containing costs and managing scarce resources in light of rising demands for and costs of care they provide. Physicians are often asked to consider limiting services for their patients to benefit society more broadly.

11 Jul 2011

ICU nurses doubt whether clinical neurological examination can establish brain death

More than half of Sweden's intensive care nurses doubt that a clinical neurological examination can establish that a patient is brain dead. Intensive care nurses also perceive that this uncertainty can affect relatives when the question of organ donation is raised, is reveiled in a thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

29 Jun 2011

Ontarians can now register as organ and tissue donors online through new web site

For the first time ever, Ontarians can now register as organ and tissue donors online through a new web site, BeADonor.ca. Every registered donor has the potential to save up to eight lives.

15 Jun 2011

Cyclopamine may protect cholestatic livers from damage after transplant procedure

New research raises the possibility that the critically short supply of livers for organ donation could be expanded by treating so-called "marginal" livers with a substance that protects them from damage after being connected to recipients' blood supplies.

2 Jun 2011

HIV-infected donors present novel source of organs for HIV-infected transplant candidates

A new study published in the American Journal of Transplantation reveals that HIV-infected deceased donors represent a potentially novel source of organs for HIV-infected transplant candidates that could decrease waitlist deaths and even shorten the national waitlist.

23 May 2011

Liver cells made in the lab using skin cells: Study

In a medical breakthrough, researchers have been able to convert skin cells into liver cells. This could one day eliminate the need for organ transplants, they say.

12 May 2011

U.Va, Coulter Foundation partner for translational research in biomedical engineering

The University of Virginia and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation have teamed to create a $20 million endowment to foster research collaboration between biomedical engineers and clinicians, with the goal of developing new technologies to improve patient care and human health.

3 May 2011

State news highlights: Texas Senate approves Medicaid savings bill

The Senate unanimously approved Sen. Jane Nelson's bill to find extensive cost savings in Texas' Medicaid program, the primary health care provider for children, the disabled and the very poor. ... The measure expands Medicaid managed care into South Texas, where it has long been carved out — expected to save the state $290 million over the biennium.

30 Apr 2011

Could HIV-infected organs save 'lives?

Johns Hopkins researchers argue for reversing ban on transplanting infected organs and making them available to HIV-infected patients

30 Mar 2011

Chembio develops DPP assay for rapid detection of HIV and HEP B/C

A kidney recipient in a New York City hospital recently contracted HIV from the transplanted organ, which came from a living donor, according to the New York State Department of Health. Although an initial screening had been performed on the donor, he or she apparently had unsafe sex after the test but before donating the kidney.

28 Mar 2011

Simultaneous face and hand transplant announced in the UK

Following the first full face transplant in the U.S., one of the leading surgeons in the U.K. has announced that he’s preparing to carry out a the world’s second simultaneous face and hand transplant.

23 Mar 2011

First hand transplant recipient on the way to recovery

A 26 year old mother has received the world’s first hand transplant. The 17 member surgical team from the Hand Transplant Program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center has performed the operation over 14 hours. They painstakingly attached tendons, blood vessels and nerves. The patient had lost her hand in a traffic accident 5 years ago. The patient is currently recovering.

8 Mar 2011

State roundup: Mass. effort to manage care for chronically ill; promoting organ donations

For a glimpse of the future of Massachusetts health care as Gov. Deval Patrick envisions it, consider Phyllis Minsky. At 82, Phyllis is complex. Medically, that is. ... Older patients with multiple chronic diseases are the biggest consumers of health care; some 15 percent of Medicare patients make up over 75 percent of health care spending.