Whilst Spain has announced a new record for organ donations the number in Germany is stabilising at a ‘low level’. The good news? The number did not fall any further following scandals surrounding the manipulation in the allocation of donor organs.
The results of a new study suggest that high discard rates among donated kidneys could be avoided in the future. Researchers say that even kidneys with poor biopsy results may be more efficient in prolonging patients' lifespans than other treatments.
Approximately 30,000 organ transplants occur in the United States each year. However, between 20 and 50 percent—depending on the organ type—of the transplanted organs fail within five years, most often because the recipient’s immune system attacks, or “rejects,” the donated organ.
A new method which doubles the usual time donor lungs can remain outside the body can benefit patients, staff and allow retrieval of donor lungs across greater geographical areas, says a study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) and the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) in Vienna have discovered a new way to turn the immune system’s weapons against fungal invaders. This knowledge could lead to the development of new and improved anti-fungal treatments.
MedUni Vienna researchers have published the results of a clarifying research study on the potential transmissibility of Alzheimer’s disease. Although the protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid-β, might be transmissible under very unusual circumstances, this does not go along with a transmission of the clinical manifestation of Alzheimer’s disease. The affected persons…
With 4,360 transplant operations from 1,682 donations in 2014, Spain broke the country’s own record and confirmed its place as the world leader in organ donations, a position it has held for the past 24 years.
A new cellular structure responsible for previously unexplained rejection of organ transplants has been identified by researchers at the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM.)
Surgeons at the University Hospitals Leuven have used a new technique for two recent liver transplants: in both cases the organ was preserved prior transplantation in a device that mimics the environment of that in the human body, making sure the liver stays ‘healthier’. The device can even assess and improve the quality of the liver.
Publicly insured Americans who undergo lung transplantation for cystic fibrosis fare markedly worse in the long run than both publicly insured patients in the United Kingdom and privately insured Americans, according to the results of a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and U.K. colleagues working in that nation’s government-funded National Health Service.
The very first successful organ donation from a newborn to be carried out in the UK is reported in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. The donor was a girl born at term after an emergency caesarean section in the neonatal unit of Hammersmith Hospital, London. The donation involved the kidneys, which were transplanted into a patient with renal failure, and liver…
A transplant team at a Birmingham hospital has achieved a world first after resuscitating a liver that would have previously been considered unviable.
A social media push boosted the number of people who registered themselves as organ donors 21-fold in a single day, Johns Hopkins researchers found, suggesting social media might be an effective tool to address the stubborn organ shortage in the United States.
Artificial hearts, originally designed to bridge the time on the waiting list for a heart transplant, in recent years have increasingly become an independent treatment option for patients with chronic heart failure (HF). Interview: Bettina Döbereiner
The Collaborative Transplant Study has evaluated data on approximately 500,000 transplantations worldwide, providing a scientific basis for organ allocation and transplant treatment.
The worldwide scarcity of organ donations inevitably draws attention to the so-called Spanish model.
4,500 scientists, transplant teams and related social groups from 94 countries gathered in Berlin for the International Congress of the Transplant Society.
Rumour had it for a while, and many found out when the bomb was finally dropped at, of all places, the Congress of the International Transplantation Society, held in Berlin this July – the waiting list for donor organs in the database of the Eurotransplant Foundation had been manipulated.
A Birmingham hospital is pioneering a new procedure which aims to maintain and improve the quality of organs for transplantation in recipients on the waiting list.
When the ISICEM 2012 opens this March, Brussels will again experience a healthy influx of medical specialists intent on hearing the most recent, clinically relevant developments in research, therapy and management of the critically ill.
People who donate a portion of their livers for transplant to a relative or friend whose liver is failing can generally expect to live long, healthy lives and recover safely from the donation surgery, Johns Hopkins researchers have found.
Changing the organ donation process in this country from opt-in — by, say, checking a box on a driver’s license application— to opt-out, which presumes someone’s willingness to donate after death unless they explicitly object while alive, would not be likely to increase the donation rate in the United States, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.
Although donor organ management is improving, the number of heart transplants is decreasing. According to Eurotransplant, 115 heart transplants were performed in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 149 of such interventions in the same period last year.
Initially meant to bridge the gap before a heart transplant is performed, today ventricular assist devices (VADs) are increasingly considered ‘a lasting therapy option’, according to Professor Heinrich Schima, Head of the Centre for Medical Physics and Biomedical Technology at the Medical University of Vienna.
You often need the vision of a hypermetropic eagle to find Malta on the world map – even its name fills more space than the representation of the island itself. And yet, in the Eurobarometer 2010 survey, among the recent European Union Member States, the Maltese showed an unusually high level of consent (72%) to organ donation and 77% are willing to donate their own organs, making us a beacon…