Organ donation after cardiac deathAugust 15, 2008Penn bioethicist tackles changing boundaries of organ donor guidelines (PHILADELPHIA) - The babies were dying - without life support, they might live just another few minutes. Their families had said goodbye, and wanted their newborns to become organ donors, in hopes of saving another tiny life. But the babies' conditions couldn't meet the normal standards for organ donor eligibility. What to do? The August 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine explores the issue of organ donation after cardiac death through the lens of emotionally charged cases like these, which occurred at the Denver Children's Hospital. In the journal's Perspective Roundtable, Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, weighs in on the ethical considerations of the changing assumptions about when death occurs, the importance of respecting "the dead donor rule" and how to decide which patients are suitable organ donors. University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine |
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| Related Organ Donor Current Events and Organ Donor News Articles World premiere in stem cell research in Montreal A team from the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) at Université de Montréal has succeeded in producing a large quantity of laboratory stem cells from a small number of blood stem cells obtained from bone marrow. While majority of Americans express interest in organ and tissue donation, few register While the number of Americans registered as organ and tissue donors is rising, the registry still only includes 38 percent of licensed drivers. Kidney transplant survival can be long-term for people with HIV A Johns Hopkins study finds that HIV-positive kidney transplant recipients could have the same one-year survival rates for themselves and their donor organs as those without HIV, provided certain risk factors for transplant failure are recognized and tightly managed. New technique improves outcome for living donor liver transplants The University of Alberta Hospital (UAH) is one of only a few centers in Canada that perform living donor liver transplantation, a surgical procedure developed in the late 1980s that expands the organ donor pool. About 80 liver transplants are done a year in Alberta, 10 of those being living-donor. Scientists confirm new virus responsible for deaths of transplant recipients in Australia In the first application of high throughput DNA sequencing technology to investigate an infectious disease outbreak, scientists from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIRDL) in Melbourne, Australia, the Centers for Disease Control and 454 Life Sciences link the discovery of a new arenavirus to the deaths of three transplant recipients who received organs from a single donor in Victoria, Australia in April 2007. Scientists confirm new virus responsible for deaths of transplant recipients in Australia In the first application of high throughput DNA sequencing technology to investigate an infectious disease outbreak, scientists from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIRDL) in Melbourne, Australia, the Centers for Disease Control and 454 Life Sciences link the discovery of a new arenavirus to the deaths of three transplant recipients who received organs from a single donor in Victoria, Australia in April 2007. Increasing survival of organ transplant patients by reducing time interval for transported organs Preservation of an organ intended for transplant during transport from donor to recipient is of primary concern in ensuring a successful transplant. Liver regeneration may be simpler than previously thought The way the liver renews itself may be simpler than what scientists had been assuming. A new study, appearing in the April 13 issue of The Journal of Biological Chemistry, provides new information on the inner workings of cells from regenerating livers that could significantly affect the way physicians make livers regrow in patients with liver diseases such as cirrhosis, hepatitis, or cancer. Emory algorithm improves kidney transplant chances for sensitized patients Approximately one-third of the patients on the national waiting list for kidney transplants have only a small chance of receiving a new organ, no matter how long they are on the list. Due to prior transplants, pregnancies or blood transfusions, these patients have developed antibodies that make it very difficult to match them with donor organs. 'Domino' transplant program makes best use of altruistic donated kidneys A team of Johns Hopkins researchers reporting their early experiences with "domino" kidney donation suggest that wider use of this strategy could effectively double the benefit of the organs from these non-directed, altruistic living donors. More Organ Donor Current Events and Organ Donor News Articles |
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