all organ transplants stories

The ethics of the organ bazaar

404132862 — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:56:48 -0500

In nearly every country in the world, there is a shortage of kidneys for transplantation. In the United States, around 73,000 people are on waiting lists to receive a kidney. Yet 4,000 die every year before the lifesaving organ is available.

Worldwide, about 66,000 kidney transplants are performed annually. By far, that’s too slow a rate to help an estimated 1 million people who have end-stage renal disease.

Man-made medical mystery gets second solution

50443248 — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 17:04:10 -0400

Researchers have created a new material that they believe improves on an eight-year-old solution to a decades-long medical mystery over the cause of widespread artificial joint failure.

The new material, developed at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and implanted for the first time July 19, could help fill the demand for higher-performance joints from a new generation of patients.

Seven children doing well with laboratory-grown organs

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:26:12 -0400

Three boys and four girls treated at Children's Hospital Boston are the first people in the world to receive laboratory-grown organs. The children, aged 4 to 19, received bladders grown from their own cells and have now been followed for an average of almost four years. Their cases are reported in the April 4, 2006 online edition of the journal The Lancet.

"This is one small step in our ability to go forward in replacing damaged tissues and organs," said Anthony Atala, MD, who began working on the technology in 1990 as director of Tissue Engineering for the Urology Program at Children's Hospital Boston. Atala now directs the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

HMS examines ethics of Internet organ donation

50443248 — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:46:44 -0400

Desperation and frustration are prompting some patients with failing organs to turn to modern technology and the Internet to bypass lengthy organ donation waiting lists and find donors themselves.
The practice, which has resulted in several transplants already through a locally run Web site, has sparked a discussion over its ethics, a topic debated Thursday (May 12) at a Harvard Medical School (HMS) Medical Ethics Forum, "Soliciting Organs on the Internet," sponsored by HMS's Division of Medical Ethics.

Improved procurement could more than double organ availability

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:31:55 -0400

Although millions of people across the country are registered organ donors, only 2 percent of them annually suffer brain death and meet the other medical requirements for being a cadaveric donor. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggests that the number of actual donors may be further limited by organ procurement organizations that do not utilize the most efficient practices. Though the need for transplantable organs far outweighs the supply, the number of organs donated could actually be more than doubled -- saving thousands of lives every year -- if the procurement process were improved. These findings by researchers from Harvard Medical School, Boston University, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement appeared in the summer issue of Health Care Financing Review. "We needed to know if we have a supply of potential donors who can meet the demand for organs," said Edward Guadagnoli, first author on the study and an associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. "We didn't know until we used a statistical model to estimate that number." The researchers determined that the number is about 17,000 potential donors each year.