PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

First kidney paired donor transplants performed

2010-12-11
(Press-News.org) LEBANON, NH - Kathy Niedzwiecki of Pelham, NH, and Ken Crowder of St. Louis are experiencing renewed life and health thanks to the generosity of two living kidney donors.

Cathy Richard of Henniker, NH, had planned to donate to her sister-in-law, Ms. Niedzwiecki, and Rebecca Burkes of St. Louis had intended to be a living donor for her fiancé, Mr. Crowder – only to find that both were medically incompatible with their intended recipient. But in the first paired donation arranged through a national pilot program of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), Ms. Burkes was able to donate to Ms. Niedzwiecki and Ms. Richard became a donor for Mr. Crowder.

"Paired donation is helping the transplant community help people who otherwise could not get a living donor transplant. We're proud to be able to coordinate these for the first time using a national network for potential matches among 77 participating transplant programs," said OPTN/UNOS president Charles Alexander, RN, MSN, MBA. United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) operates the OPTN under federal contract.

The donor recovery and transplant operations all took place Monday, December 6. Ms. Niedzwiecki was transplanted at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Mr. Crowder received a transplant at Barnes-Jewish Medical Center in St. Louis. Ms. Richard underwent surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, and Ms. Burkes donated her kidney at Barnes-Jewish. The kidneys were preserved for transportation by the New England Organ Bank and Mid-America Transplant Services; Angel Flight, Inc. also provided air transportation to and from Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

Dr. David A. Axelrod, section chief of transplantation surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, performed both the donor and transplant operations at his center. "We all realize that the shortage of donors is only getting worse," he commented. "One solution is to expand the accessibility to live donor transplants. The innovation here is an increasing pool of potential donor-recipient pairs. Expanding the database of willing and able live donors, at the local, regional, and national level through programs like this pilot, enables us to maximize access to this precious resource."

Drs. Surendra Shenoy and Jason Wellen performed the donor and recipient surgeries at Barnes-Jewish. "Paired kidney exchange programs have allowed for a significant increase in the number of patients that receive a living kidney transplant, therefore freeing up additional cadaveric kidneys for the 80,000 plus people on the national wait list," said Dr. Wellen, surgical director of the Washington University/Barnes-Jewish kidney and kidney/pancreas transplant program. "A nationally run paired exchange program will allow for many new donor/recipient matches to take place that would otherwise not have been available through smaller-run paired exchange programs."

The donors and recipients were paired according to the first computerized match run conducted by the OPTN in October 2010. Each transplant program participating in the pilot program submits detailed medical information on potential living donors and candidates to an affiliated coordinating center, which works directly with UNOS on administrative issues such as enrolling donor/recipient pairs, making logistical arrangements and entering data. The New England Program for Kidney Exchange (NEPKE) was the coordinating center for Ms. Richard and Ms. Niedzwiecki; Johns Hopkins Hospital served as the coordinating center for Mr. Crowder and Ms. Burkes.

"We are extraordinarily grateful for the work of the coordinating centers, each of which also arranges kidney paired donations within its own network of transplant programs," said Mr. Alexander of the OPTN and UNOS. "The goal of the pilot project is to see whether combining the data of multiple centers and networks will generate successful matches that may not be found through one individual organization. The fact that these transplants occurred from the first match run suggests this will be true."

Future match runs will be conducted every four to five weeks with information on potential living donors and candidates supplied by pilot participants. Each transplant program will make individual medical decisions about accepting living donors or candidates and whether they qualify for matching through the pilot program. In addition, each program must document that potential living donors have undergone a rigorous medical screening and have provided detailed informed consent for donation and for potential participation in a national match run.

INFORMATION:

The following websites provide additional information: For the Barnes-Jewish Medical Center kidney transplant program: http://www.barnesjewish.org/kidney-transplant For the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center transplant center: http://www.dhmc.org/goto/Transplant For the OPTN kidney paired donation pilot program: http://optn.transplant.hrsa.gov/resources/KPDPP.asp

The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) is operated under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Division of Transplantation by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). The OPTN brings together medical professionals, transplant recipients and donor families to develop organ transplantation policy.

ABOUT DARTMOUTH-HITCHCOCK: Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a national leader in evidence-based and patient-centered health care. The system includes hundreds of physicians, specialists, and other providers who work together at different locations to meet the health care needs of patients in northern New England. In addition to primary care services at local community practices, Dartmouth-Hitchcock patients have access to specialists in almost every area of medicine, as well as world-class research at Dartmouth Medical School and centers such as The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice (TDI).

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Combination therapy reduced HER2-positive breast cancers

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — A combination of lapatinib, trastuzumab and paclitaxel significantly improved tumor response rates than either agent alone among patients with HER2-positive breast cancers, according to data presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12. Full results were presented at the symposium during a press briefing on Dec. 10, 2010, at 8:00 a.m. CT. Reporters who cannot attend in person can participate using the following call-in information: U.S. and Canada: (888) 282-7404 International: (706) 679-5207 Access Code: ...

Phase III study compared neoadjuvant therapy with lapatinib or trastuzumab for early breast cancer

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — Researchers presented Phase III efficacy data from the GeparQuinto study, a head-to-head comparison of neoadjuvant lapatinib and trastuzumab in combination with chemotherapy for patients with early breast cancer, at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12. "We had a primary goal to compare the standard anti-HER2 neoadjuvant combination of chemotherapy, trastuzumab, with the new combination of chemotherapy and lapatinib," said Michael Untch, M.D., head of the multidisciplinary breast cancer department at Helios Clinic ...

Pertuzumab and trastuzumab combination improved efficacy for women with HER2-positive breast cancer

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — The combination of pertuzumab and trastuzumab had superior antitumor activity in women with early HER2-positive breast cancer, according to Phase II study results of the NeoSphere neoadjuvant trial. Details of these study results were presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12. "The findings establish that the addition of pertuzumab to trastuzumab and the chemotherapy drug docetaxel has an impressive rate of tumor eradication (46 percent), which is 50 percent more than achieved with docetaxel and trastuzumab, ...

Circulating tumor cells predicted recurrence, death in patients with early-stage breast cancer

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — The presence of one to four circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood of early-stage breast cancer patients almost doubled patient's risk of cancer relapse and death, and five or more CTCs increased recurrence by 400 percent and death by 300 percent, according to Phase III results of the SUCCESS trial. These cells were found in patients after surgery but before chemotherapy treatment. Results of this study were presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12, 2010, and demonstrate the value of CTCs in early breast ...

High CTC levels predicted poor outcome in metastatic breast cancer

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — A high level of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) — cells that have detached from a tumor and are circulating in the body through the blood — are an independent prognostic marker in metastatic breast cancer as first-line therapy. In addition, persistence of high CTC level during therapy was found to be an early marker of poor outcome. "This is the largest, prospective series validating the prognostic value of CTCs in first-line chemotherapy metastatic breast cancer, independently from serum tumor markers for overall survival," said Jean-Yves Pierga, M.D., Ph.D., ...

Denosumab delayed time to first skeletal-related side effect

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — For patients with breast cancer and bone metastases, denosumab delayed skeletal-related side effects five months longer compared to those on zoledronic acid, according to results presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12. "The average life expectancy of patients with metastatic breast cancer is approximately 2.5 years, so if you can prolong the time without a skeletal-related event by five months, you are substantially benefiting the patient," said Alison T. Stopeck, M.D., associate professor of medicine ...

CTCs predict poor outcome from blood stem cell transplantation therapy for metastatic breast cancer

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — Metastatic breast cancer patients who had circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in their blood before or after high-dose chemotherapy (HDCT) followed by autologous stem cell transplantation had poor outcomes, according to researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Patients with CTCs in their blood before chemotherapy treatment had reduced survival and those with these cells in their blood after the stem cell transplant recurred faster and died earlier. These findings were presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer ...

Phase III efficacy data on bevacizumab plus chemotherapy in early breast cancer to be presented

2010-12-11
SAN ANTONIO — Results of the GeparQuinto study, randomized Phase III efficacy data on the use of bevacizumab plus chemotherapy to treat women with early breast cancer will be presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Gunter von Minckwitz, M.D., Ph.D., managing director of the German Breast Group, and colleagues are conducting final analyses on efficacy data from this study, which will detail the early treatment of more than 1,900 patients with HER2-negative breast cancer treated with chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab. "So far, ...

FReD can help explain how a bee sees!

FReD can help explain how a bee sees!
2010-12-11
Bees can see colours but they perceive the world differently to us, including variations in hue that we cannot ourselves distinguish. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Imperial College London have developed FReD – the Floral Reflectance Database – which holds data on what colours flowers appear to be, to bees. The development of the catalogue, which has involved a collaborative effort between researchers at two Schools at Queen Mary is reported in the journal PLoS ONE. The work addresses the existing issue that records of flower colours do not take ...

Boxing -- bad for the brain

2010-12-11
Up to 20% of professional boxers develop neuropsychiatric sequelae. But which acute complications and which late sequelae can boxers expect throughout the course of their career? These are the questions studied by Hans Förstl from the Technical University Munich and his co-authors in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[47]: 835-9). Their evaluation of the biggest studies on the subject of boxers' health in the past 10 years yielded the following results: The most relevant acute consequence is the knock-out, which conforms ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Heat and heavy metals are changing the way that bees buzz

What’s behind the enormous increase in early-onset gastrointestinal cancers?

Pharmacogenomics expert advances precision medicine for bipolar disorder

Brazilian researcher explores centenarian stem cells for aging insights

Dr. Xuyu Qian's breakthrough analysis of 18 million brain cells advances understanding of human brain development

Gene networks decode human brain architecture from health to glioma

How artificial light at night damages brain health and metabolism

For ultrasound, ultra-strength not always a good thing

Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercising more enjoyable and give you better results

Study shows people perceive biodiversity

Personality type can predict which forms of exercise people enjoy

People can accurately judge biodiversity through sight and sound

People diagnosed with dementia are living longer, global study shows

When domesticated rabbits go feral, new morphologies emerge

Rain events could cause major failure of Waikīkī storm drainage by 2050

Breakthrough in upconversion luminescence research: Uncovering the energy back transfer mechanism

Hidden role of 'cell protector' opens cancer treatment possibilities

How plants build the microbiome they need to survive in a tough environment

Depression due to politics and its quiet danger to democracy addressed in new book 'The Sad Citizen'

International experts and patients unite to help ensure all patients are fully informed before consenting to new surgical procedures

Melting glaciers could trigger more explosive eruptions globally, finds research

Nearly half of U.S. grandchildren live within 10 miles of a grandparent

Study demonstrates low-cost method to remove CO₂ from air using cold temperatures, common materials

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

Mass timber could elevate hospital construction

A nuanced model of soil moisture illuminates plant behavior and climate patterns

$2.6 million NIH grant backs search for genetic cure in deadly heart disease

Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program changed drastically when anxiety was added as a qualifying condition

1 in 5 overweight adults could be reclassified with obesity according to new framework

Findings of study on how illegally manufactured fentanyl enters U.S. contradict common assumptions, undermining efforts to control supply

[Press-News.org] First kidney paired donor transplants performed