Scarring of Transplanted Kidneys Less of a Problem Today

Yahoo News

TUESDAY, April 12 (HealthDay News) -- Progressive scar damage to transplanted kidneys may be less common and less severe than reported in previous research, says a new study.

The research included 797 patients who received new kidneys between 1998 and 2004 and were followed for at least five years.

One year after transplant, 87 percent of the patients had mild or no signs of progressive scar damage on their new kidney. After five years, that decreased slightly to 83 percent, said the Mayo Clinic researchers.

The investigators noted that their findings contrast with studies of patients who received kidney transplants in the early 1990s. Those earlier reports found most transplanted kidneys were affected by progressive scarring that eventually resulted in transplant failure.

"These results are significant and encouraging for everyone who is concerned about long-term survival for kidney transplant patients," transplant surgeon Dr. Mark Stegall said in a Mayo Clinic news release. "Our results suggest that transplanted kidneys may be doing better than reports from prior eras have indicated."

The study is published in the April issue of the American Journal of Transplantation.

More information
The National Kidney Foundation has more about kidney transplant.

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Your generosity can save or enhance the lives of up to fifty people with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants (see allotransplantation). One tissue donor can help by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Organs can save lives, corneas renew vision, and tissue may help to restore someone's ability to walk, run or move freely without pain. Life Begins with You

Edith Helm, 76, first woman to receive kidney transplant

When she died Wednesday (April 6) at age 76 in Chandler, Okla., from complications of dementia, she was the world’s longest-surviving transplant recipient and the first kidney transplant patient to give birth.

By J.M. Lawrence Boston Globe Correspondent

Edith Helm was a 20-year-old newlywed from Oklahoma in the spring of 1956 when doctors said she had months to live. Her kidneys were failing fast.

Doctors at what was then Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston had performed the first kidney transplant in history two years earlier. But they had never tried the operation on a woman. Mrs. Helm was the first.

When she died Wednesday at age 76 in Chandler, Okla., from complications of dementia, she was the world’s longest-surviving transplant recipient and the first kidney transplant patient to give birth.

Her kidney came from her identical twin, Wanda Foster, who lives in Davenport, Okla.

“She never brought it up again,’’ Foster said in an interview with the Globe. “It was just like she got her life, and she lived it. That’s what she did.’’

Mrs. Helm worked most of her life as a cook in school cafeterias and at a senior center in Chandler, her sister said. Her greatest joy was her offspring: a son, a daughter, and grandchildren.

As young women, Mrs. Helm and her sister put their trust in their doctors and never looked back.

“I don’t think I even gave an extra thought,’’ Foster said of her decision to give her sister a kidney. “They said it could help her. I really hadn’t thought anything different. That’s what we wanted.’’

Mrs. Helm “was at death’s door’’ when she came to Boston, said Dr. Joseph E. Murray, the last surviving member of the team that performed the first kidney transplants.

“Fortunately, she lived a wonderful life,’’ said Dr. Murray, who is now 92 and lives in Wellesley.

He recalled consulting with a priest before doing the surgery “about the extra danger’’ to a woman of child-bearing age. “We received encouragement,’’ he said. “And the family wanted to go ahead.’’

“We were concerned about the kidney being traumatized by the birth of a baby’s head. We worried around operating on a woman, but we went ahead, after explaining it to the family very carefully,’’ he said.

The first kidney recipient in history was Richard Herrick, who died eight years after his 1954 surgery from problems unrelated to the kidney he received from his twin brother Ronald, who died in December.

Richard Herrick visited Mrs. Helm and her sister in the hospital before their surgery. News photographers later captured Mrs. Helm leaving the hospital with her husband, Lee, a dairy worker, in August 1956.

“I’ve never been operated on before, never been east before, never been on a plane before. This has really been an experience,’’ Mrs. Helm told The Globe then.

Near the end of Mrs. Helm’s first pregnancy, Dr. Murray asked her to return to Boston, where he cared for her at what was known as the Lying-In Hospital. His own wife was pregnant at the time with their fifth child. “She used to kid me and say, ‘You spend more time with Edith than you do with me,’ ’’ Dr. Murray said.

In 1996, Mrs. Helm and her sister returned to what is now Brigham and Women’s Hospital to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their operation and to honor Dr. Murray, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990.

Dr. Stefan G. Tullius, who is chief of transplant surgery today at Brigham and Women’s, said Mrs. Helm and her sister helped make possible “the world of transplantation that we now know.’’

“Today we hear of the successes of kidney, liver, pancreas, lung and heart transplantation, and now, amazingly, even full-face transplantation. Society owes a debt of gratitude to the pioneering patients, surgeons, and physicians who have made these life-giving and lifesaving procedures a reality,’’ Tullius said.

In addition to her sister Wanda, Mrs. Helm leaves her son, John E. of Ripley, Okla.; her daughter, Vickie Hicks of Chandler, Okla.; two brothers, Kenneth Johnson of Sparks, Okla., and Jim Johnson of Davenport, Okla.; another sister Sandy Haines of Ponca City, Okla.; four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

Services have been held. Burial was in Oak Park Cemetery in Chandler, Okla.

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Register to be an organ and tissue donor & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario at Trillium Gift of Life Network NEW for Ontario: recycleMe.org - Learn The Ins & Outs Of Organ And Tissue Donation. Register Today!
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save or enhance the lives of up to fifty people with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants (see allotransplantation). One tissue donor can help by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Organs can save lives, corneas renew vision, and tissue may help to restore someone's ability to walk, run or move freely without pain. Life Begins with You

Similar Graft Survival for Recipients of Older Kidneys

Total graft survival during a four-year follow-up period is comparable for recipients of kidneys from older (age 60 years or older) donors, younger donors, or from deceased standard criteria donors, according to a study published online March 14 in the American Journal of Transplantation.

Doctor's Lounge

FRIDAY, April 1 (HealthDay News) -- Total graft survival during a four-year follow-up period is comparable for recipients of kidneys from older (age 60 years or older) donors, younger donors, or from deceased standard criteria donors (SCDs), according to a study published online March 14 in the American Journal of Transplantation.

Anne Young, Ph.D., from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, and colleagues investigated the effect of the age of the kidney donor on recipient outcome between January 2000 and March 2008. Donors were classified as older living (60 years or older), younger living, or deceased SCD. Recipients received 73 kidneys from older living donors, 1,187 from younger living donors, and 1,400 SCD kidneys. The primary outcome measured was total graft loss. Survival analysis was assessed using medical records and electronic health care data during an average four-year follow-up period.

The investigators found that there was no significant difference in total graft loss between recipients of kidneys from younger and older living kidney donors (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.56; P = 0.06). The HR increased with time but was not affected by recipient age or donor glomerular filtration rate. There was no significant difference in total graft loss between recipients of older living kidneys and SCD kidney recipients (adjusted HR, 1.28; P = 0.30).

"Using the results from this study, transplant professionals can inform their patients that graft survival from older living kidney donors is not inferior to receiving a kidney from a deceased SCD," the authors write.

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“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Register to be an organ and tissue donor & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario at Trillium Gift of Life Network NEW for Ontario: recycleMe.org - Learn The Ins & Outs Of Organ And Tissue Donation. Register Today!
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save or enhance the lives of up to fifty people with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants (see allotransplantation). One tissue donor can help by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Organs can save lives, corneas renew vision, and tissue may help to restore someone's ability to walk, run or move freely without pain. Life Begins with You

Woman, 54, celebrates 23 years with kidney transplant

The typical patient will live ten to fifteen years longer with a kidney transplant than if kept on dialysis. The years of life gained is greater for younger patients, but even 75 year-old recipients (the oldest group for which there is data) gain an average four more years' life. People generally have more energy, a less restricted diet, and fewer complications with a kidney transplant than if they stay on conventional dialysis. (source: Wikipedia

Lucky donation: Helen Williams is living life to the full 23 years after her kidney transplant. Picture: Ari Hatzis

BY JESSICA FOULDS Hume Weekly

HELEN Williams is passionate about organ donation because it returned her life to her.

The 54-year-old Glenroy resident received a much-needed kidney transplant 23 years ago.

At 22, Ms Williams was diagnosed with chronic reflux nephritis, a kidney disorder. It had not caused her any serious symptoms or pain.

She was told she would eventually need a kidney transplant. By the time she received one 10 years later, her condition had deteriorated.

"I was green, the colour of broccoli, with big and bulbous eyes," she recalls. "I was very thin and weighed 47kilograms.

"I was on a very strict diet. But I tried to keep myself occupied and travelled as much as I could."

In the seven weeks leading up to her transplant, Ms Williams was on dialysis four times a day.

"It was a waiting game. I had a little pager I carried around waiting for the call that would save my life."

That call came at 2am one morning and by 2pm the next day the four-hour transplant operation was complete. "I was a new person. I was reborn," she says.

"I could drink and eat what I liked, I had energy. I could travel again."

This week is DonateLife Week, which encourages Australians to talk with their loved ones to make them aware of the importance of organ and tissue donations.

Ms Williams said she had been transformed by the "gift of life".

She works as a personal assistant at the National Australia Bank and is a member of Transplant Australia.

"It's a life-changing experience," she says.

"Without this I would not be where I am now. It makes you realise how lucky you are. I am free. Every year is a milestone for me. I do often think about it.

"To be given the chance I've been given you cannot thank that person enough. We are lucky some people are generous enough to become donors."

There are about 1700 Australians on waiting lists for organ and tissue transplants, including kidney, heart, lung, skin tissue and cornea.

For more information, visit www.donatelife.gov.au

“You Have the Power to Save Lives – Register to be an organ and tissue donor & Tell Your Loved Ones of Your Decision”

Register to be a donor in Ontario at Trillium Gift of Life Network NEW for Ontario: recycleMe.org - Learn The Ins & Outs Of Organ And Tissue Donation. Register Today!
For other Canadian provinces click here

In the United States, be sure to find out how to register in your state at ShareYourLife.org or Download Donor Cards from OrganDonor.Gov

In Great Britain, register at NHS Organ Donor Register

In Australia, register at Australian Organ Donor Register

Your generosity can save or enhance the lives of up to fifty people with heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas and small intestine transplants (see allotransplantation). One tissue donor can help by donating skin, corneas, bone, tendon, ligaments and heart valves

Has your life been saved by an organ transplant? "Pay it forward" and help spread the word about the need for organ donation - In the U.S. another person is added to the national transplant waiting list every 11 minutes and 18 people die each day waiting for an organ or tissue transplant. Organs can save lives, corneas renew vision, and tissue may help to restore someone's ability to walk, run or move freely without pain. Life Begins with You