Latest Organ transplant Stories

Face transplantation, a procedure popularized in fiction, most notably from the movie Face Off, starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, is now reality, thanks to researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston, who have successfully performed three such operations this year. The details of the three groundbreaking full facial transplants (FFTs) were released in a research article published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. A surgical team at BWH performed...

Research published today in the British Journal of Anaesthesia suggests that organ donation rates in the UK could be increased if the current issues affecting declined consent are improved. At present, only 30% of the UK population are registered on the NHS Organ Donor Register (ODR). From 2003 to 2005, the overall consent rate for donation after brain death (DBD) was 59%. This figure remains largely unchanged with a consent rate of 63% for DBD in 2007-2009. The low consent rate for organ...

PORT ORANGE, Fla., Dec. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Marco Barusco and his team at Tempus Hair Restoration have created the "Tempus Restore Initiative" and the "Tempus Pro-Bono Program" to give back all year long to people who have faced difficult times. Dr. Barusco, a world renowned hair transplant surgeon, has made his mission to use his expertise to provide hair transplant surgery to people who have scars and/or have lost part of their hair due to trauma or medical treatment....

CENTENNIAL, Colo., Dec. 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- AlloSource, (www.allosource.org) a leading developer, processor and distributor of bone and soft-tissue allografts for use in surgical procedures around the world, today announced its sponsorship of a living symbol of the evolving possibilities of tissue transplantation as a float rider aboard the annual Donate Life float in the Tournament of Roses Parade®. Susan R. Cossabone, an equine instructor from Egg Harbor City, NJ, was no...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Friday that it has approved the first heart pump for children with heart failure, giving a new treatment option for patients who are too small to receive adult implants. The ventricular assist device is made by Germany-based Berlin Heart, and is the first heart pump approved to help children survive as they await a heart transplant.   The device does the work of a normal heart in children with congenital or other cardiovascular defects,...

SILVER SPRING, Md., Dec. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a medical device that supports the weakened heart of children with heart failure to help keep them alive until a donor for a heart transplant can be found. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090824/FDALOGO) The mechanical pulsatile cardiac assist device is called the EXCOR Pediatric System, made by a German company, Berlin Heart. The device comes in graduated sizes to...

At present, a lot of regenerative medicine technologies are in the developmental stage and approaching commercialization stage. The market was estimated at USD 7.2 billion last year and is poised for rapid development in the forthcoming years. New market research report “Global Regenerative Medicine Market” developed by RNCOS E-Services has been recently published by Market Publishers Ltd. London, UK (PRWEB) December 13, 2011 Regenerative medicine is touted as the...

Public/Private effort encourages organizations to promote organ and tissue donation ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Eight organizations, including the American Hospital Association (AHA), have committed to sharing information and encouraging hospitals and health systems nationwide to promote organ and tissue donation by joining with the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) as national partners in...

Ex vivo technique uses oxygen, nutrients and antibiotics to assess and recondition donor lungs outside the body prior to transplantation A 59-year-old woman from upstate New York and a 60-year-old woman from the New York metro area were the first patients in New York state and among the first in the United States to receive transplanted lungs that were assessed and reconditioned in the operating room -- a technique that has the potential to dramatically increase the availability of lungs...

Transplant surgeons live in the hope that one day they will be able to wean at least some of their patients off the immunosuppressive drugs that must be taken to prevent rejection of a transplanted organ. A team of researchers led by Alberto Sánchez-Fueyo, at the University of Barcelona, Spain, has now identified markers that might make this possible for liver transplant recipients. Transplant recipients must take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of...