Recently added articles from Transplant News:

Report predicts number of organ and tissue transplants globally will top 115,000 by 2012.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Fueled by the number of increasing availability of live donor organs and transplant outcome success rates, the global organ and tissue transplantation market is projected to top 115,000, according to an analysis prepared by a market research company. The report, which was ...

HRSA seeking comments on making slight changes in living donor assistance reimbursement program.(United States. Health Resources and Services Administration)(Brief article)

Mar 01, 2008 ... Six months after publishing the eligibility requirements for participating in the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC) program being administered by the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS) and the University of Michigan, the Health Resources and Services ...

Despite increased awareness and treatment for high blood pressure high risk kidney patients ignoring the danger.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Despite increased awareness and treatment of high blood pressure, control rates among people at risk for kidney and cardiovascular problems is poor. Only one in 10 have blood pressure that falls within a healthy range, according to a new study published in the March American Journal of ...

Recipients getting a kidney from older donor have higher rate of heart disease.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Transplant recipients who receive a kidney from an older donor experience an increased stiffening of their aorta which may provide an explanation for the higher rates of cardiovascular disease and death in patients receiving kidneys from expanded criteria donors (ECD), according to a new ...

Access to kidney transplant, CKD treatment affected by race, insurance status of the patient, study finds.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Access to getting a kidney transplant or early treatment for chronic kidney disease (CKD) is affected by the race and insurance status of the patient and only universal access to health care may overcome the disparities, according to two new studies published in the March issue of the ...

Public meeting to discuss proposed OPTN regulations will be held April 4.(Organ procurement and transplantation network)(United States. Health Resources and Services Administration)(Brief article)

Mar 01, 2008 ... HRSA will hold a meeting to which the public and all stakeholders are invited for discussion and recommendations about the issues. The meeting will be held on Friday, April 4, 2008, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Parklawn Building, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20057 Requests ...

HRSA to determine if vascularized composite allografts should be included under OPTN regs.

Mar 01, 2008; Warren, Jim ... The federal government has launched an effort to determine if the time has come to include vascularized composite allografts such as hand and face transplants to the number of organs covered by regulations governing the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). In an ...

New Medicare plan to pay kidney dialysis centers to deliver more efficient care to ESRD patients drawing support.

Mar 01, 2008 ... A new plan that would make improvements in how Medicare pays kidney dialysis centers to more efficiently deliver services to Medicare beneficiaries with end stage renal disease issued to Congress on February 20 has drawn strong support from the renal community. The report, which ...

Cylex ImmuKnow test may identify kidney transplant patients at risk for early acute rejection.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Cylex, Inc., Columbia, MD, announced that an independent, peer reviewed, clinical research study in which the level of cellular immune response measured prior to kidney transplantation using its proprietary ImmuKnow immune cell function test was found to identify patients that may be at ...

Canadian Blood Services decision to "rebrand" unrelated bone marrow registry paying immediate dividends.

Mar 01, 2008 ... The Canadian Blood Services' decision last November to "rebrand" its national bone marrow registry by changing the name of the registry from the Unrelated Bone Marrow Donor Registry to the OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Donor Network in an attempt to get more ethnic citizens to sign on has ...

Australian government finally moving to address low organ donation rate.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Despite adding a million registrations to the organ donor registers in Australia since 2002, the number of organs being donated has dropped to fewer than 200 a year, one of the lowest donor rates in the world. Studies show that 94% of Australians support the concept of organ ...

Supreme Court rules FDA has exclusive authority to regulate medical devices.

Mar 01, 2008 ... The US Supreme Court has ruled that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pre-market approval (PMA) process for medical devices preempts state tort lawsuits approved through that process. The court ruled 8 to 1 that Congress has granted the FDA the exclusive authority to ...

CryoLife receives FDA 510(k) clearance for SynerGraft processed human pulmonary heart valves.

Mar 01, 2008 ... CryoLife, Inc., Atlanta, GA, announced the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given 510(k) clearance for its CryoValve[R] SG pulmonary human heart valve processed with the company's proprietary SynerGraft technology. The company says its SynerGraft technology is designed to remove ...

Kiadis Pharma gets FDA ok to begin phase 3 trial for drug to eliminate cancer cells from autologous graft after bone marrow transplant.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Kiadis Pharma, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, announced the FDA has approved the company's investigational new drug application (IND) to allow the start of a clinical phase III study for its product Reviroc in the US. Reviroc is under development for the elimination of cancer cells from an ...

Drug-Free Breakthrough for Transplant Patients.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in January reported that they had been able to wean four of five kidney transplant patients off anti-rejection drugs, a feat that could eventually lead to a sharp reduction in the use of immunosuppressant medications, according to the Los Angeles ...

Blacks Waiting for Lung Transplants Face Poorer Outcomes.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Blacks awaiting a lung transplant during a recent 10-year period were less likely to receive a new lung and more likely to die or be removed from the transplant list than whites, according to new research from Columbia University Medical Center. The findings, published in the ...

Embryonic Stem Cells Can Create Immune System.

Mar 01, 2008 ... A new study demonstrates for the first time that embryonic stem cells can be used to create functional immune system white blood cells. The work was published online in the journal Blood. A team of scientists from Iowa, Taiwan, and Germany used embryonic stem cells containing ...

Nurse Admits Stealing Body Parts of the Dead.

Mar 01, 2008 ... In continuing legal proceedings related to Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), nurse Lee Cruceta admitted January 30 in Philadelphia that he cut body parts from 244 corpses and helped forge paperwork so the parts, some of them diseased, could be used in unsuspecting patients, according to ...

Heart Transplant Waiting List Mortality Decreases Following UNOS Policy Change.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Wait list deaths among heart transplant candidates have dramatically decreased since a 2006 Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network policy change in the sequence of heart allocation, according to early data shared at the OPTN/United Network for Organ Sharing Board of Directors ...

Researchers Re-program Skin Cells into Embryonic Cells.

Mar 01, 2008 ... Scientists at the University of California-Los Angeles have reprogrammed human skin cells into cells with the same unlimited properties as embryonic stem cells -- without using embryos or eggs. Directed by scientists Kathrin Plath and William Lowry, the UCLA researchers used ...