Tag: Organ Donor

Transplant doctor discusses how living kidney donors can help those in need of a transplant.

sarah JonasExpert Pitch

Eric Martinez, MD, at Baylor Scott & White Health, discusses how living kidney donors can help those in need of a transplant.  What You Need to Know: Risk factors that could lead to kidney transplant include high blood pressure and…

Cleveland Clinic Researchers Develop New Model for Prioritizing Lung Transplant Candidates

sarah JonasResearch Results

CLEVELAND: A team from Cleveland Clinic has developed a new model for prioritizing patients waiting for a lung transplant, aimed at improving outcomes and reducing deaths among those in need of donor lungs. The new method offers an improved strategy for organ allocation by taking into account how the time a patient has spent on the waiting list could impact the severity of their disease and the urgency of their need for a transplant.
The results of a study looking at this new method were published today in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Penn Medicine Launches New Center for Living Donation to Increase Transplant Opportunities for Those in Need of Livers or Kidneys

sarah JonasAnnouncement

The Penn Transplant Institute at Penn Medicine has opened a new Center for Living Donation which will expand Penn’s exceptional care for living donors, helping to maximize the number of lives saved through liver and kidney transplantation. For the thousands waiting on a lifesaving organ, living donation—when a living person donates an organ, or part of an organ, for transplantation to another person—can help those in need receive life-saving care sooner.

University Hospitals Employee Offers to Donate Kidney within Ten Minutes of Meeting Patient in Need

sarah JonasFeature

Erika Hosey, a cardiovascular technician at University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center, ended the year by giving a life-changing gift to a patient in need. While performing a routine cardiac stress test, she drummed up a conversation. She learned that her patient, Denise Butvin, had kidney disease and needed transplant surgery.

“Erika just blurted out…I’ll give you my kidney,” said Butvin. “I was in shock. I couldn’t believe this was real.”

While Butvin is a positive person, she has been through an emotional rollercoaster of ups and downs and on waitlists in Ohio and Pennsylvania for five years. Her family and friends were not an organ match. Both her sister and father were on dialysis for many years and passed away from kidney disease, so she knew how pressing this transplant surgery was.

Hosey started the process the next day, and after a few weeks of testing turned out to be a perfect donor match. “To be a kidney donor match for someone is really a shot in the dark,” she