April 26 - Recent Transplant News

Local access to subspecialty care influences the chance of receiving a liver transplant
Source: Liver Transplantation (subscription required)
Prior studies have examined the impact of demographic factors on liver transplant outcomes. These factors may be surrogate markers for access to medical care. Researchers investigated physician density in referred patients' hospital service areas (HSAs) as a factor in patients' probability of receiving a liver transplant. Researchers performed a retrospective review of patients referred for liver transplantation from 2002 through 2010. Read more.

Renal artery stenting may protect allografts
Source: Renal & Urology News
Renal artery angioplasty and stenting may help improve outcomes in kidney transplant recipients who have stenosis in their transplanted renal artery, researchers reported at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 38th Annual Scientific Meeting. Dr. Robert Lookstein, Chief of Interventional Radiology and Associate Professor of Radiology and Surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and his colleagues conducted a single center retrospective review to examine the long-term effects of stenting in renal transplant patients diagnosed with transplant renal artery stenosis (TRAS) resulting in acute, acute on chronic, or chronic kidney dysfunction. Read more.

Complement mediated renal inflammation induced by donor brain death: Role of renal C5a-C5aR interaction
Source: American Journal of Transplantation (login required)
Kidneys retrieved from brain-dead donors have impaired allograft function after transplantation compared to kidneys from living donors. Donor brain death (BD) triggers inflammatory responses, including both systemic and local complement activation. The mechanism by which systemic activated complement contributes to allograft injury remains to be elucidated. The aim of a recent study was to investigate systemic C5a release after BD in human donors and direct effects of C5a on human renal tissue. Read more.

Economic and financial outcomes in transplantation: whose dime is it anyway?
Source: Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation (subscription required)
Organ transplant is a resource-intensive service that has been subjected to increasing scrutiny in this era of cost containment. A detailed understanding of the economic (societal) and financial (transplant provider) implications of organ quality, recipient characteristics, and allocation policy is vital for the transplant professionals. Read more.

Erythrocytosis after liver transplantation: The experience of a university hospital
Source: Liver Transplantation
The prevalence and causes of erythrocytosis after liver transplantation have never been studied, even though this condition is known to predispose patients to thrombosis leading to graft failure or death. Erythrocytosis after orthotopic liver transplantation (OLT) can be defined as an increase in the red cell mass >125 percent in patients without a pre-OLT history of this condition. Read more.

Hyponatremia linked to thiazide use
Source: Renal & Urology News
Thiazide use is associated with an increased risk of hyponatremia, and this risk is influenced by age and body mass index (BMI), according to a population-based study. Compared with individuals not exposed to thiazides, those who took the medications had a nearly fivefold increased risk of hyponatremia, researchers reported online ahead of print in the American Journal of Kidney Disease. Read more.

Size-related assessment on viability and insulin secretion of caprine islets in vitro
Source: Xenotransplantation (subscription required)
The successful isolation, purification and culture of caprine islets has recently been reported. The present study shows arange of size distribution in caprine islet diameter from 50 to 250 μm, in which 80 percent of the total islet yield was comprised of small islets. Read more.

Identifying potential kidney donors using social networking websites
Source: Clinical Transplantation
Social networking sites like Facebook may be a powerful tool for increasing rates of live kidney donation. They allow for wide dissemination of information and discussion and could lessen anxiety associated with a face-to-face request for donation. However, sparse data exist on the use of social media for this purpose. Researchers recently searched Facebook, the most popular social networking site, for publicly available English-language pages seeking kidney donors for a specific individual, abstracting information on the potential recipient, characteristics of the page itself, and whether potential donors were tested. Read more.

Kidney regeneration and repair after transplantation
Source: Current Opinion in Organ Transplantation (subscription required)
A recent study briefly shows which mechanisms and cell types involved in kidney regeneration and describes some of the therapies currently under study in regenerative medicine for kidney transplantation. The kidney contains cell progenitors that under specific circumstances have the ability to regenerate specific structures. Apart from the knowledge gained in the self-regenerative properties of the kidney, new concepts in regenerative medicine such as organ engineering and the use of mesenchymal stem cell-based therapies are currently the focus of attention in the field. Read more.