Editor's Note A team of Cleveland Clinic surgeons on February 24 performed the nation’s first uterus transplant. The 9-hour procedure was performed on a 26-year old patient who had uterine factor infertility. The transplanted uterus came from a deceased organ donor. Further information will be released this week in a…
Editor's Note Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, is the first and only center in the US to be approved by the United Network for Organ Sharing to perform HIV-positive to HIV-positive organ transplants. The hospital will be the first in the nation to do an HIV-positive to HIV-positive kidney transplant and…
Editor's Note This 20-year study of more than 11,000 solid organ transplant patients found they had a 1.93 to 2.84 times higher risk of dying from cancer. The risk was highest for skin cancer, followed by non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and liver cancer. The administration of immunosuppressants or less aggressive cancer treatment…
Editor's Note The Cleveland Clinic will perform uterus transplants in 10 women as part of a research study, the Washington Post reports. The candidates are women aged 21 to 39 who have uterine factor infertility. The procedure involves stimulation and freezing of multiple eggs, uterus donation from a deceased donor,…
Fifth and final article in a series on managing bone allografts. A unified program for managing biologics, including tissues and blood, has helped a Massachusetts hospital to meet regulatory requirements, track adverse events, and have a consistent process for bringing new tissues into the organization. The 2½-year-old Biovigilance Program at…
Second in a series on managing bone allografts. Bone-graft substitutes in all of their many forms have one purpose—to replicate the "gold standard" for bone repair and healing—the patient's own bone. Though a patient's own tissue—an autograft—is the ideal replacement for injured or diseased bone, an autograft may not be…
Asimultaneous quintuple kidney transplant took place at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital on Nov 14, 2006. The historic event was made possible by a kidney swap involving 4 transplant candidates who each had a relative willing to donate a kidney and a fifth candidate who matched a donor who had offered…