Germany seeks Spanish help on organ transplants

According to Wikipedia, the laws of different countries allow potential donors to permit or refuse donation, or give this choice to relatives. The frequency of donations varies among countries. For example, Germany (16 donors/million) has an opt-in system whereas under Spain's opt-out system it has the highest organ donation rate in the world (34 effective donors per million inhabitants). German officials are to be congratulated for making this effort to help improve their system.

By Steve Tallantyre, The Local, Spain

Top officials and doctors from Germany are in Spain to get help on how to improve the performance and transparency of their organ donation and transplantation system.

The delegation of government officials and doctors from Germany's DSO transplant organization arrive in the wake of a series of scandals involving data manipulation to alter waiting lists in that country, according to online daily Lasprovincias.

The head of Spain's National Transplant Organization (ONT), Rafael Matesanz, explained that when the German government ordered a leading lawyer to review and overhaul organ donation systems, he had contacted Spain to analyze the Spanish model to see which aspects of it could be successfully transplanted.

"They can't change their system overnight but they can adapt many of the concepts that we've developed and try to modify them to help them improve," he said.

"It's important for a country like Germany, which has always operated its transplant system independently, to come to Spain because we are a leader in this area."

The German system is very different to the Spanish because it depends on the cooperation of the various German federal states, the procurement of organs through the DSO and their distribution via a company called Eurotransplant.

In Spain, the ONT is responsible for both the procurement and transplantation of not just organs but also other tissues and cells whereas in Germany these are handled separately by "many different private companies".

The German Ministry of Health is not involved in the process.

"We have urged them to change in this regard," said Matesanz.

He added: "Spain was the first country where the department of health got involved with transplants and, after 25 years of working well it has proven to be effective."

The German delegation have invited Matesanz to visit Berlin to explain the Spanish transplant model to the federal parliament and how it could be adapted to the German healthcare system.

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links 

Prince Andrew opens new transplant center

by TOM FOOT, Camden New Journal

“Prince Andrew, a patron of the NHS Trust, gave his royal seal of approval to The UCL Institute for Immunity and Transplantation. The opening of the institute is the first step in a journey which I hope will end in us being able to repair and replace many damaged organs and cure lifelong conditions including blindness and spinal cord injuries.”

Prince Andrew takes a closer look at the Royal Free Hospital's new transplant centre

Prince Andrew at the UCL Institute for Immunity and Transplantation

Published: 13 June, 2013
by TOM FOOT

THE Duke of York took a peek through a microscope and chatted with patients as he opened a transplant research centre in the Royal Free Hospital.

Prince Andrew, a patron of the NHS Trust, gave his royal seal of approval to The UCL Institute for Immunity and Transplantation.

Experts at the specialist centre in the Pond Street hospital – the first of its kind in the country and one of only five in the world – hope to cure diabetes and develop gene therapy to end long-term drug treatment programmes.

Professor Hans Stauss, director of the institute and a world-renowned expert on tumour immunology, said: “The opening of the institute is the first step in a journey which I hope will end in us being able to repair and replace many damaged organs and cure lifelong conditions including blindness and spinal cord injuries.”

There will be 200 researchers working at the institute when it is finished.

The Royal Free Charity is aiming to raise £47million to complete the second phase of the project by 2017.”

Chris Burghes, chief executive of the Royal Free Charity, said: “I think that of the many high-profile research projects we fund, the Institute of Immunity and Transplantation has the potential to bring the most dramatic benefits for a large number of patients.”

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links 

Device May Increase Availability of Donor Livers for transplant

Investigational Device Prolongs Survival Of Livers for Transplantation

By Victoria Stern, General Surgery News

Patients who need a new liver to survive must hope that they are one of the approximately 13,000 liver transplant recipients in the United States and Europe each year. But with 30,000 people on waiting lists, and with only ice keeping livers for transplantation viable for up to 14 hours, the odds are not always in the patients’ favor. Each year, more than 2,000 livers don’t survive the journey to their new home.

A liver 30 seconds after connection to the OrganOx Metra device. Parts of the organ are still cold, while other parts are warm and perfused with red cell solution.

“Preserving organs by cooling them down is far from perfect,” said Peter J. Friend, MD, director of transplantation surgery, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, Oxford Transplant Centre, U.K. “Although cooling the organ on ice slows its metabolism by a factor of 10, the liver continues to metabolize slowly and deteriorates as a result. It’s hard to tell which organs will work and which ones won’t.”

Now, however, Dr. Friend and his colleague Constantin Coussios, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Oxford, have devised a novel technology that may be a game changer: A machine that allows the liver to function for up to 24 hours, as though it were still inside a human body.

On March 15, the team of engineers and physicians announced the preliminary success of this machine, which has safely transported livers to two transplant recipients at King’s College Hospital in London.

“The first two cases went very well,” said Dr. Friend. “They weren’t exceptionally high risk, but the machine did what it was supposed to do.”

The liver 5 minutes after connection to the OrganOx Metra, now fully perfused and at physiologic temperature.

Long Time in the Making

In 1994, Drs. Friend and Coussios devised the idea for the technology, but faced several engineering challenges while developing it. The co-inventors needed to create an artificial environment, that could simulate the key functions of the human body, including pumping blood and providing nutrition to the organ. These functions not only had to be automated to make it possible for transplant surgeons around the globe to use the technology, but also small enough for easy transportability.

After 15 years of developing and tweaking the design, Drs. Friend and Coussios have created a technology that appears to meet these requirements. The liver’s main blood vessels are connected to tubes on the machine, which automatically regulate the environment around the liver. The device maintains the liver at body temperature and infuses it with oxygenated red blood cells, nutrition such as glucose and amino acids, and other chemicals to create a physiologic environment that mimics the human body. The liver is not only kept alive, but it continues to produce bile as well.

Additionally, the machine is compact.

“It’s about the size of a supermarket trolley [shopping cart], which means it can go in back of ambulance, small plane or helicopter,” Dr. Friend said. “Size was very important because we knew there was no point in making a machine if it couldn’t fit in the back of a vehicle.”

Notably, the machine also may allow the liver to recover from injuries it sustained during or before removal, Dr. Friend pointed out. This function of the device is particularly important because it could expand the number of viable livers for transplantation. In recent years, the demand for livers has grown, as liver disease has become more common, whereas the quality of donor livers has diminished.

The King’s College Hospital, Oxford University and OrganOx team successfully connects the first human liver for transplantation to the OrganOx Metra device.

“More and more, donors tend to be older, and have a high body mass index or coexisting major health problems,” Dr. Friend noted. “Because of the increasing demand for livers, we are having to use organs we would have once said no to.”

Now with the machine, transplant surgeons can test how well the liver is working during preservation.

“If the liver works on the pump, then we can assume it will work in the recipient,” said Maria B. Majella Doyle, MD, MBA, associate professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, who specializes in liver transplantation. Dr. Doyle was not involved in developing this pump, but she is performing research to develop a different liver pump system, one that also keeps the liver at physiologic temperature.

In April 2008, Drs. Friend and Coussios cofounded a company called OrganOx Ltd., to continue their University of Oxford research. With financial support from the Royal Society and several venture capital funds in the United Kingdom, the company has been working to bring the technology to patients.

Although promising, the device still needs more testing. The U.K. team has begun a pilot trial at King’s College Hospital to test the ability of the machine to transport livers to 20 transplant patients. If the trial is successful, OrganOx then could apply for marketing authority, which would make the device commercially available in Europe.

“If the machine is as good as we believe, we would expect a significant increase in patients who get liver transplants,” Dr. Friend said.

According to Dr. Doyle, the group is “ahead of the game.” To her knowledge, two other teams are developing physiologic-temperature liver pump systems—Dr. Doyle and her colleagues William Chapman, MD, and Vijay Subramanian, MD, at Washington University, and Constantino Fondevila, MD, PhD, at the University of Barcelona—but both are at more preliminary stages.

“The U.K. team is the first to produce human data with the pump and show it’s safe and viable as a liver transplantation device. Now, it’s important to make sure the technology is foolproof and cost-effective,” Dr. Doyle said.

“The U.K. team needs to be highly commended. The pump is a great achievement.”

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Girl gets lung transplant after policy revised

US girl gets lung transplant after political firestorm and temporary policy change

The changes—effective for one year pending further review—allow transplant programs to request higher priority for children and allow for doctors to consider transplanting lungs from teens or adult donors.

By Kerry Sheridan, Medical Express

A 10-year-old American girl whose dire need for a lung transplant catapulted her into the political spotlight underwent potentially life-saving surgery Wednesday after a donor was found.

"God is great! He moved the mountain! Sarah got THE CALL," wrote Janet Ruddock Murnaghan, the mother of the critically ill child, on her Facebook page.

The Pennsylvania girl, who suffers from cystic fibrosis and was said to be near death's door without a transplant, entered surgery early Wednesday, her mother said. The operation was expected to last several hours.

The case drew international attention when the child's family gave interviews to cable news networks and pleaded with the US government to bend the rules and allow her to be put on the list for an adult lung transplant.

She was at the top of a waiting list for children under 12, but pediatric donor lungs are far rarer than those from adults, and experts had given Sarah only a few weeks to live if doctors did not perform a transplant.

It was unclear whether the donated organs, which arrived late Tuesday, came from an adult or a child.

"Please pray for Sarah's donor, her HERO, who has given her the gift of life. Today their family has experienced a tremendous loss, may God grant them a peace that surpasses understanding," her mother wrote.

"Today is the start of Sarah's new beginning and new life!"

The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia declined to share any details about the surgery, citing patient privacy.

Last week, a US judge took the unusual step of ordering that the child should be placed on an adult waiting list, after Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius declined to intervene and the family filed a lawsuit, alleging that current US standards discriminated against children.

A change.org petition by the girl's family and friends appealing for new donor policy regarding children in need of transplants drew more than 372,000 supporters.

The practice of transplanting adult organs into children is relatively rare.

Just one lung transplant has occurred in the United States since 2007 involving a donor older than 18 and a recipient younger than 12, according to government data.

On Monday, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network agreed to revise its policy on transplant candidates 11 and under, which previously stated that children may only be considered for adult lungs if there were no other suitable candidates.

The changes—effective for one year pending further review—allow transplant programs to request higher priority for children and allow for doctors to consider transplanting lungs from teens or adult donors.

"The number of patients potentially affected by this policy is very small and unlikely to have a significant impact on the larger pool of transplant candidates," the OPTN said.

As of June 10, there were 1,659 candidates listed for a lung transplant nationwide, of whom 30 were under age 10.

Murnaghan was diagnosed as an infant with cystic fibrosis, a chronic lung disease that affects about 70,000 people worldwide. The median survival age is the late 30s.

While Murnaghan's case sparked a torrent of media attention, it also raised questions about the ethics of appealing for medical help in such a public way, with some experts fearing it could set a damaging precedent.

"It raised the question, can you sue or use PR (public relations) or otherwise campaign to get to the head of the line?" said Arthur Caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center.

"In our system in the US, you sometimes can use money to gain an advantage. I don't think that is a startling revelation," he told AFP.

However, he added that the girl's apparent victory of getting a transplant does not guarantee it will be successful, and complications are frequent in such cases.

"I think this little girl got herself into the woods by her parents fighting for her, and that helped. But she is not out of the woods."

UPDATE:

Sarah Murnaghan underwent a six-hour surgery Wednesday at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia according to her Aunt, Sharon Ruddeock.

 Explore further: Transplant group considers lung rule changes

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Don't take those kidneys with you

Everyone can be a superhero by donating an organ

By Cathy Evans

There are no bathrooms in heaven. That’s a bit of a presumptuous declaration on my part, as I have never visited the afterlife, nor am I psychic. But in the many books that describe the experiences of people miraculously brought back from the dead, no one ever mentions bathrooms.

Despite the lack of toilets in the afterlife, we seem to be reluctant to hand over our kidneys – or other organs – when we no longer need them. Canada has one of the lowest organ-donation rates in the developed world.

At some level, I understand – after all, it’s a gross topic of conversation. Until you need a transplant to live, and then all you can think about is those icky, elusive organs.

Waiting helplessly for the organ that will save the life of someone you love is like finding out your cruise ship is sinking and your pleasurable journey is abruptly ending. You rush your family to wait in line for lifeboats, but there aren’t enough. A primitive self, a being that you were unaware of, emerges – and all the polite manners you were taught as a child and have been true to as an adult are wiped out. You would plead, scream, bribe and finally fight like an unsocialized pit bull to get your loved one a spot on one of the remaining lifeboats.

When my 39-year-old sister was diagnosed with lung cancer, I was hit with the unfairness of it all. No one in my family smoked. We ate broccoli and antioxidant-laden fruits; heck, we even exercised.

It turns out that a healthy lifestyle doesn’t prevent the particular form of lung cancer Anne had. The doctor held out the tiniest light of hope – a possible lung transplant. But my sister would have to wait with 1,400 other people to see if an organ became available in time.

Waiting doesn’t suit me – I am a doer, a problem solver, an action-oriented person. In the face of possible tragedy, I wanted to be my sister’s hero, swooping through the medical system to find a solution to this horrible situation.

I am no stranger to the world of superheroes. Like Walter Mitty, I escape the mundane routine of life by dreaming that I can fly about the city in a mask, red satin cape and flattering spandex tights, saving lives. In my fantasies, I have rescued a man, coincidentally handsome, trapped in a burning building as he crouches on the floor, coughing and gasping. I have jumped into a swimming pool to haul out a drowning child. I’ve never shared these fantasies with my family because frankly, even to me, they sound childish and narcissistic.

There was no role for me as an action hero on the transplant circuit. It was all about waiting: waiting in doctors’ offices, waiting for X-ray and chemotherapy results, waiting for therapy, and waiting for my sister to laboriously walk a few steps to the wheelchair, gasping for breath, as we sorted out the oxygen lines. And, most frustrating, waiting for her to be at the front of the organ lineup.

Finally, after endless hours spent staring at the silent mobile phone, the call came, and hope in the form of shiny, healthy, pink lungs arrived.

Anne had waited a year for the lungs that would prolong her life. During that time, I learned to be patient, to pause and appreciate the joyous moments of life – skating with my nephew and niece, just sitting still, quietly talking with my sister – instead of scurrying around like a rat trying to find its way out of a maze.

On the evening of the transplant, Anne was close to death. The hugs and kisses in her hospital room were sprinkled with tears and promises. My sisters and I vowed we would help with her children, finish the award nomination for her surgeon and, if the transplant didn’t work, bury her in the pretty, violet-blue outfit she had bought in Paris the previous summer.

My sister had three precious years after the double lung transplant. When people tell me three years is not much time, I point out that it is how we live the minutes, the hours and the days that counts.

Three years is infinity if it is filled with children’s laughter, birthday celebrations, drives in a sports car with the top down, and pink tulips emerging from the damp ground every spring, full of promise. It is time to write journals and stories, take photographs and carefully select gifts for the children to unwrap on special future occasions to remember how much they were loved by their mother.

I no longer fantasize about flying from a rooftop in my tights to save a life. I can’t pretend spandex and red capes are important when I encountered so many authentic heroes in the transplant world – patients who drew upon unknown depths of courage; stoical families, selfless donors, and physicians and nurses who tirelessly dispensed cautious hope in the face of tears.

On the Christmas Day before my sister died, she handed me a flat box wrapped in glittery silver paper. I opened it carefully to find a personalized licence plate: “My Hero.” It hangs framed in my office, reminding me that I don’t need tights or a cape to be courageous in life.

She died in April, which is National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness month.

There are no bathrooms in heaven, so you won’t need to take those kidneys with you.

Cathy Evans, PhD, MSc, BScPT

University of Toronto

Dept. of Physical Therapy

Graduate Coordinator

Assistant Professor

Thanks to Cathy Evans for submitting this guest post about her sister Anne Barbetta, who I knew very well. Anne was a successful fundraiser for transplant and cancer research and a promoter of organ & tissue donation.

Merv.

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Double lung transplant gives Willmar, Minn., native 'a second chance at life'

When I read Pam Lehn's story it was as if she was talking about my lung transplant at Toronto General Hospital. 

Like her, I suffered from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) and experienced the same symptoms and transplant process. She kept a wonderful blog hungry-for-air.org during her diagnosis and treatment that I encourage you to read.

Pam Lehn, is a Minnesota  native now living in Toronto .

By Anita Polta,, West Central Tribune

WILLMAR -- Pam Lehn and Scott Dyer talked it over and decided that when the time came, it would be Dyer who broke the news.

On Feb. 3, Dyer blogged the words they waited months to write:

This morning at 1 a.m., the nurse awakened Pam with the news we have been waiting for: a set of donor lungs was available for transplant.

A long surgery and recovery lay ahead but it was the couple's best -- and only -- hope for keeping Lehn alive.

Four months later, they're still awed at how much has changed since Lehn, 56, received the double lung transplant at Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario.

"Just standing and doing the dishes, it's like 'wow,'" Lehn said. "It gives you a second chance at life. Really, it gave me my life back."

Said Dyer: "Since the transplant, every day is better than the one before. It's truly remarkable."

One of Lehn's goals during a mid-May trip to Willmar, where she grew up and where some of her family, including her 91-year-old father, Lloyd Lehn, still live: walking the path down to the lakeshore at the couple's vacation home on Games Lake.

"I have this wonderful place to look forward to when I can breathe again and enjoy all the riches," she wrote last September on her blog, Hungry for Air, that chronicles her months-long fight with pulmonary fibrosis (hungry-for-air.org).

The first hint of the struggle ahead surfaced in the summer of 2008 when Lehn and Dyer traveled to Tibet while visiting China during the Summer Olympics. Everyone in the group felt the effects of the altitude "but Pam could never catch her breath," Dyer recalled. "She was red-faced and blue-lipped and laboring all the time. That's when we started to think something was wrong."

Back home in Toronto, where they have lived for several years and work in film animation, Lehn's lung capacity continued to worsen.

Fall 2008:

I was having difficulty moving around with heavy coats and boots. Dressing to take the dogs out, I had shortness of breath. Every day when I went to work I had to climb a spiral staircase, every morning I was at my desk catching my breath.

One year, several imaging tests and a lung biopsy later, Lehn and Dyer got the news. Lehn had idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a form of lung disease leading to progressive scarring of the lungs and progressive deterioration in the ability to breathe.

About 128,000 new cases of IPF are diagnosed annually in the United States. The cause of the disease is unknown.

Lehn and Dyer turned to the Internet for information, and what they found was bleak: There is no cure for IPF and few effective treatments, other than a lung transplant.

"That's when we realized just how truly serious this was," Dyer said.

There was one piece of good news: Toronto General Hospital had an organ transplant program with a worldwide reputation for success -- and it was close to home besides.

Sept. 8, 2012:

I was slowly starting to lose steam over the summer and by mid-August my family showed concern that I was having a much more difficult time doing the simpler things like standing, cooking, walking from room to room, even brushing my teeth ...

I called my doctor this Tuesday to say I couldn't walk without being short of breath. They swung into action, had me go in for tests, agreed that the disease had further advanced from July and we completed the forms and as of Friday, September 7th, 2012, I am listed for a lung transplant.

By winter her condition was deteriorating alarmingly. She couldn't walk without oxygen. Her day narrowed to one task at a time: Get dressed, then rest; brush her teeth, rest again.

"As Pam got more ill, literally the only thing she focused on was staying alive," Dyer said. "By the final week in January, it was so severe and her oxygen needs were so high, I realized we could no longer take care of her at home."

Patients can wait anywhere from six months to two years until a donor match is found. As many as 20 percent die before a matching lung or pair of lungs becomes available for transplant. Lehn was so sick that she was placed at the top of the waiting list. She ended up waiting five months to receive new lungs.

Feb. 5, 2013

As I write this, Pam has been out of surgery for a mere 48 hours. Yet she is sitting on a chair in front of me. There is no ventilator. She is breathing on her own. Tomorrow she will walk.

Through the fall and winter, the blog became one of the ways for Lehn and Dyer to stay in touch with a wide circle of family, friends and coworkers. New entries often generated a response within hours.

When Dyer read the comments aloud to her after her surgery, it was "so healing," Lehn said. "That was the nicest thing -- those words of encouragement."

The couple doesn't know anything about the donor, other than that it was likely a younger individual from the Toronto area. When the time is right, they plan to write a letter that will be forwarded to the family.

Lehn said she's giving long and careful thought to what she will say. "It's very generous of them because they're in their darkest grieving hours and they have to let go," she said.

The joy they feel will always be offset by the knowledge of someone else's pain, Dyer said.

"There's very few good things that come out of a loved one passing away," he said. "Being an organ donor is a way to find a meaningful legacy in what is otherwise a horrible, horrible event. It's important that you make that decision to become a donor and talk to your family about it."

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Canadian children receive organ transplants

Organ Transplants in U.S. is a Problem that Canadians Solved a While Ago

Canadians didn´t invent the wheel, but occasionally they are in the right path in terms of health care measures.

In Philadelphia, two terminally-children need to receive a lung transplant that would save their lives.

Javier Acosta is a boy of 12-years-old who has cystic fibrosis. And Sarah Murnaghan is a 11 year old girl. Both have Cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic disorder that affects the lungs.

According with National organ donor policy the priority of the system is for people of 12 and older. And Javier is 12 and Sarah is 10. Javier´s brother died two years ago of the same disease.

The debate is about the fairness of transplant policies. Some specialists said that this is fair, because is equal for everyone. For instance, secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Health and human services, didn´t want to intervene in Sarah´s case because other 40 children in Pennsylvania over 12 were waiting for a lung transplant.

The Canadian system is different, and is also much more fair. Such case would never occur in Canada. There is a single list and children are on top of that list.

CTV news Canada informed, that Ronnie Gavsie, president of the Trillium Gift of Lfe Network said that Canadian system is working, “we have a list where the most medically needy person, who has been on the wait list the longest, will be the first to get the organ, regardless of age”.

And Dr Gary Levy, director of the multi-organ transplant program at Toronto´s University Health Network said, “We believe children come first. We consulted widely… we believe children are a priority”.

On another hand back in United States, Lawrence O. Gostin, health law professor, said “People who have privilege or people who complain more loudly or have political voice shouldn´t be able to claim special treatment”.

Dr. John Roberts, Organ Procurement and Transplantation said, “ under-12 year old policy for lungs accounts for younger children´s different medical needs. They are particular hard to transplant, children don´t tend to fare as well and adults lungs not always fit them”.

However, Canadian Dr, Levy, said otherwise, “age should not be a factor, as adults lungs can be modified to fit smaller child´s body”.

The organization that decides the organ transplant policy will have an emergency meeting next week. A big discussion is ahead between the federal court, desperate parents and the Obama administration.

This is not a game, the life of many innocent children is at risk. Canada has a fair system and it might be the time to learn something from them.

By Oskasr Guzman, The Guardian Express
SOURCE: CTV news, Fox news, ABC news

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Russia imposes smoking ban

Congratulations to Russian authorities for taking this first step to improve the health of their people. Second-hand smoke causes the same problems as direct smoking.

Effective this past Saturday, June 1st, Russian smokers are not allowed to light-up in places such as airports, railway stations and bus stops. Smoking is now banned in public transport, schools, healthcare and sports venues, government offices, elevators and apartment complexes. 

Smoking is still temporarily allowed in pubs, cafes and restaurants, trains, ships, hotels and market places. The ban will be imposed in these areas next year on July 1, 2014.

The cost of a pack of cigarettes will increase to $2 from the current $1. (at these prices it's no wonder that almost half the Russian population smokes).

Russia ranks 172 in the Geobase world ranking for life expectancy as compared to Canada,  ranked 13, France  ranked 14 and the U.S. ranked number 53. 

Ten years ago I met several patients on the waiting list for a lung transplant, all suffering from COPD and carrying oxygen tanks. To this day I still vividly remember one patient sadly saying to me "Why did I ever smoke?" 

Not only does smoking cause lung disease that can only be cured by a lung transplant, it also can cause coronary heart disease, lung cancer, kidney disease and high blood pressure. All smokers are at risk for more than two dozen diseases and conditions and the average smoker will die about 8 years earlier than a similar non-smoker. About half of all smokers will die from smoking, most before their 70th birthday after years of sickness and reduced life style.

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Lung Transplantation Survival Rates Drop?

by Janet Grace Ortigas , The Guardian Express

Approximately, 1400 lung transplant operations are done in the United States every year. Hospitals all over the country carry out at least 20 to 40 operations a year, including more than 150 a year at UCSF and Stanford. The two Bay Area medical institutions announced that the patient survival rates a year after an operation ranges from 90 to 94 percent. However, national and local statistics show that 55 percent of lung transplantation patients survive after five years, and it indicates a drop in survival rates. The nationwide annual reports show that, only a third can expect to live for 10 years.

Dr David Weill, director of Stanford’s Center for Advance Lung Disease did his first lung operations in the 90s. It was still primitive then, but it became a lot better. The lung is the last organ to be successfully transplanted after multiple failed attempts in the 1970s to 80s. Doctors finally solved a couple of problems such as rejection and infection, which killed patients within days or weeks after the transplant. Since then, the one-year survival rate trends improved. Lung transplantation has become more common, but Dr Weill admitted that the mystery of that slow loss of lung function has not been solved. It is still unclear as to what causes most patients to die as a result of chronic rejection, and consequently the slow deterioration of the lung. Presently, lung specialists do not know how to stop or prevent this process.

Facts about Lung Transplantation

Lung transplantation is an incredibly complex operation. It is one option, a person in their final stage the disease can choose; usually after all other treatment options have proved unsuccessful, according to the University of Michigan Transplant Center. The operation requires surgical replacement of either one or two badly diseased lungs from a human donor. If patients have cancer, and they are too sick, having existing end of stage organ disorders, and infections, they may not be qualified.

Lung transplantation is not for everyone. The oldest patient qualified to receive a transplant is 65, but one can be as young as 18. The largest 5-year survival rate is about 50 to 60%. Diagnosis will indicate that the patient may need a single or double lung replacement due to cystic fibrosis. Because bacteria has settled in the lungs, which may spread and infect the new transplant, doctors tend to avoid the procedure.

The Risks of Lung Transplantation

With technology, improved surgery skills, and the work of pharmacologist, patients with single or double transplants survival rates and quality of life have improved. However, there are risks to such procedures. Statistics show that approximately 78 percent survive the first year, 63 percent survive for three years, and 52 percent for five years.

The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute report that the survival rate of double lung transplant is better than a single transplant, which translates to a survival rate of 6.6 and 4.6 years respectively. Doctors now use immunosuppressant drugs to counter lung rejection.

Major complications include rejection and infection. The immune system sees the new lung as a foreign object and a threat, thereby it creates antibodies, which may cause the body to reject the organ and the lung eventually fails. Rejection symptoms include: chest congestion, fever or flu symptoms, shortness of breath, and pain in the lung area. On the other hand, the infection can weaken the immune system, allowing viruses and bacteria to attack your system with little resistance. Long term medicines prescribed can cause diabetes, kidney damage, osteoporosis, and even cancer.

Patient Dilemmas

Aside from dealing with complications, patients requiring lung transplantation face surmountable problems. Patients have to wait for at least two years after diagnosis before qualifying. Many patients have died or will die while waiting. Nevertheless, there are patients who survived for many years without the transplant. The transplant is given to the sickest, according to Dr Steven, medical director of the lung transplantation program at UCSF. Allocation of organs is based on the vast differences in severity of one’s case. Since the establishment of the new allocation system in 2005, wait time has dropped, and so has the number of deaths.

Patients wait for months or even years. Transplants are usually subjected to ECMO or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. A patient with failing lungs can no longer expel carbon dioxide. Thus, they are given a machine that takes the place of one’s lungs.  The machine pumps blood out of the body into a tube that passes through a tube, while adding oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. However, the patient stays in the hospital immobile, until the procedure has accomplished the desired results.

Written by: Janet Grace Ortigas

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide

Benefits stopped - Heart/Lung transplant transplant patient dies

It is a sad state of affairs when an assessor working for a government bureaucracy or a health insurance company has the power to decide if a patient is well enough to return to work and deny benefits that could make the difference between life and death for patients like Linda Wooton. Merv.

The Atos criteria for ability to work included “You can understand simple messages from a stranger” and “You can use a computer keyboard or mouse and a pen or a pencil with at least one hand.”

By Ben Glaze, Mirror Co.

Linda Wootton: Double heart and lung transplant dies nine days after she has benefits stopped

 She was told her employment and support allowance was being stopped as she lay dying in a hospital bed

A double heart and lung transplant patient died just NINE DAYS after the Government stopped her benefits and ordered her to go back to work.

Linda Wootton, 49, was on 10 prescription drugs a day, suffering high blood pressure, renal failure and regular blackouts.

Yet Atos – the private firm carrying out the Government’s controversial work capability assessments – ruled she was fit enough to find a job after she was interviewed.

Cost-cutting officials sent Linda a letter telling her that her £108.05 a week employment and support allowance was being stopped as she lay dying in a hospital bed.

Her husband Peter said: “I sat there and listened to my wife drown in her own body fluids. It took half an hour for her to die – and that’s a woman who’s ‘fit for work’. The last months of her life were a misery because she worried about her benefits, feeling useless, like a scrounger.

“But there was no way in a million years she could work.”

The Coalition hired Atos to carry out the assessments as part of the welfare cuts. The firm processed almost 20,000 incapacity benefit claimants a week last year... but a third of the people who appealed against its decisions were successful.

Linda also appealed but was rejected despite her history.

She had her first heart and lung transplant in 1985 and ­returned to her council office job. But her body began to reject her new organs and she had another transplant at Harefield Hospital, Middlesex, in 1989.

There were complications and she was given 80 pints of blood in 31 hours of surgery. Afterwards, Linda was never fit enough to go back to work and claimed benefits. Refrigeration engineer Peter, 50, said: “She would be listless, falling asleep, feeling faint... she had no stamina.”

She collapsed regularly and was in and out of the Harefield specialist heart and lung centre.

Then, three months ago, her employment support allowance was withdrawn under the Govern­ment’s cuts. New rules meant she would have to prove she was ill to Atos assessors.

Peter said Linda found the process humiliating. The assessments, which have also seen some terminal cancer patients denied benefits, have been blasted as arduous and degrading.

Linda’s was at a test centre in Southend, eight miles from her home in Rayleigh, Essex, on January 3. “She couldn’t even drive herself because she kept feeling faint,” said Peter, who was not allowed in to support her.

Linda spent just 20 minutes answering questions before the assessor ended the interview.

View gallery

John Alevroyiannis / Sunday Mirror

• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "

Linda Wootton

View gallery

 

She was judged fit for work and her benefit was stopped on February 13. Peter said Linda typed her appeal on an iPad “crying her eyes out” as she lay in hospital chronically ill with a chest infection.

But the Department for Work and Pensions rejected it – and wrote to her on April 16 as she lay dying.  The letter said: “We have decided that you are not entitled to Employment and Support Allowance because you have been found to be capable of work following your recent Work Capability Assessment.”

Linda was told she would have to “score” at least 15 points from the assessment but her results were nil.

The Atos criteria for ability to work included “You can understand simple messages from a stranger” and “You can use a computer keyboard or mouse and a pen or a pencil with at least one hand.”

On April 22 Peter was called to Harefield. “I was told Linda’s condition was unsurvivable and she would be dead within two or three weeks,” he said.

“On April 24 they put her on palliative care. I sat all night with her and her breathing changed next morning.” Linda died 30 minutes later. More than 100 mourners attended her funeral earlier this month.

While the Atos assessment failed to pinpoint any of Linda’s health issues, her death certificate listed lung and heart problems, hypertension and chronic renal failure as causes.

Peter cannot grieve properly because he is so angry at how Whitehall bureaucrats ruined his wife’s precious last days. He said: “She paid her tax and national insurance – then she is treated like this. It’s disgusting.”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “Our sympathy goes out to Mrs Wootton’s family.  A decision on whether someone is well enough to work is taken following a thorough assessment and after consideration of all supporting medical evidence.”

“You Have the Power to Donate Life – Sign-up today! Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Donor Registration Links Worldwide