A 53-year-old woman from Alabama has a new lease on life after receiving a gene-edited kidney obtained from a pig, living healthily with the new organ for over a month, her New York City doctors announced Tuesday.
Towana Looney's road to kidney failure began with the ult...
People with HIV can now receive a potentially life-saving kidney or liver from a donor who is also infected with the virus, according to new rules announced Tuesday by the Biden administration.
A 57-year-old woman with COPD has received the world's first fully robotic double lung transplant.
The breakthrough surgery was performed in October at ...
People living with HIV who need a kidney can rest assured that outcomes are similar whether their kidney donor was also HIV-positive or not, a new study finds.
One- and three-year survival was the same, regardless of the donor's HIV status, as were the rate of serious si...
There have been 50 face transplants performed in 11 countries since the surgery was pioneered back in 2005, and long-term outcomes have been favorable, a new review finds.
In total, 85% of people receiving these complex surgeries survived five years and 74% were still al...
The recipient of the world’s first combined whole-eye and partial face transplant is doing well more than a year out from his groundbreaking surgery, NYU Langone doctors report.
Aaron James, a 46-year-old military vete...
Uterine transplants are relatively rare and recent -- the first was performed in 2011, and to date a little more than 100 transplants have been conducted worldwide.
However, a new study finds that these procedures are often successful, leading to pregnancies and live bir...
The U.S. heart transplant list for children isn’t accurately ranking the sickest kids highest, making it more likely they may die while waiting for a donor heart, a new study claims.
Some very sick children were categorized as category 2, the lowest of the three c...
The second person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig has died, surgeons at NYU Langone Health announced Tuesday.
The 54-year-old patient, Lisa Pisano, had both kidney failure and
For years, Marty Kedian had been without a voice.
Kedian, who hails from Haverhill, Mass., has undergone dozens of surgeries while being treated for a rare form of laryngeal cancer.
As a result, he was robbed of his voice -- along with the ability to swallow and br...
People with an "unhealthy"gut microbiome appear to be more likely to die following an organ transplant, a new study warns.
These gut microbe patterns are specifically associated with deaths from
John Nicolas was deep into kidney transplant surgery when he decided to ask his doctors if they'd started yet.
"At one point during surgery, I recall asking, 'Should I be expecting the spinal anesthesia to kick in?'"Nicolas, 28, recalled in a news release. "They had alre...
A woman who was the second person to ever receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig has had the transplanted organ removed due to complications linked to a heart pump she is using, her doctors said.
Lisa Pisano, 54, remains hospitalized and has been transferred ba...
Chicago resident Arthur "Art"Gillespie fell ill in early March 2020 with COVID, after he and his father went to visit an uncle in a nursing facility.
"I was hospitalized for 12 days with a high fever and cough, and during that time, they were taking scans of my lungs, wh...
Rick Slayman, the first person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig, has died nearly two months after having the historic surgery.
A small, implantable heart pump could help children await heart transplants at home rather than languishing in a hospital, according to a new study.
The pump is surgically attached to augment the heart's blood-pumping action, giving more time to find a donor heart, resea...
New Jersey native Lisa Pisano was staring down the end of her days.
The 54-year-old had heart failure and end-stage kidney disease, but several chronic medical conditi...
Rick Slayman, the first person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically modified pig, headed home Wednesday after faring so well that he was released from the hospital just two weeks after his groundbreaking surgery.
"This moment -- leaving the hospital today w...
Dr. Gary Gibbon didn't have long to live.
A harsh cocktail of chemotherapy, radiation and immunotherapy for his advanced lung cancer had permanently d...
The odds in the United States that a well-functioning donor heart will go to a Black man are lower than for white transplant candidates of either gender, new research shows.
The news is troubling, since "Black patients have a two to three times greater risk of developing...
THURSDAY, March 21, 2024 (HealthDay news) -- For the first time ever, doctors have transplanted a genetically edited pig kidney into a human suffering from advanced kidney failure.
Such pig kidneys, altered to lower the risk of rejection and disease, have been successful...
Researchers hope findings from a new study of liver transplant patients will lead to improved interventions for those from racial and ethnic minority groups.
The study -- led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas -- found the risk of dying while wait...
Weight-loss surgery may help patients struggling with obesity and kidney failure become eligible for a lifesaving transplant, researchers report.
Obesity is a key reason why some kidney patients are turned down for a transplant.
But weight-loss surgery "not only he...
A technique doctors use to preserve donated organs is actually doing no good, and might even be harming the organs, a new study reports.
Physicians routinely dose deceased organ donors with thyroid hormones, in a bid to preserve heart function and keep the donors' organs...
An Arkansas man maimed by a massive electrical shock to his face has successfully received the world's first whole-eye and partial face transplant.
In a 21-hour surgery performed in May, a NYU Langone Health surgical team transplanted an entire left eye and the portion o...
"Davey"Bauer hovered on the precipice of death, his lungs damaged by vaping and congested by antibiotic-resistant pneumonia.
Doctors saved his life with a jury-rigged artificial lung, a prompt double-lung transplant"¦ and a set of DD breast implants.
Doctors at No...
The second person to ever receive a transplanted pig heart has died.
Lawrence Faucette, 58, got the transplant just six weeks earlier at the University of Maryland Medical Center in an experimental procedure.
Unfortunately, the heart had been showing signs of rejec...
A liver transplant can give people a new lease on life, but at the cost of lifelong immune-suppressing medication and its risks. Now an innovative approach to reduce, or possibly eliminate, certain patients' reliance on those drugs is showing early promise.
The tactic is...
Two years after a gene-edited pig kidney was transplanted into a monkey, researchers report the monkey is still alive.
"We're the only group in the field to comprehensively address safety and efficacy of our donor organ with these edits,"said study co-author
A second human patient has received a genetically altered pig heart as he battles the ravages of end-stage heart disease.
The 58-year-old man, Lawrence Faucette, received the pig organ at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
The medical team was ...
Receiving an organ transplant can be a nerve-wracking, if lifesaving, affair, said Dr. Joaquin Brieva, a kidney transplant recipient.
...
For the first time ever, a solid humanized organ has been grown from scratch in an animal -- a first step in a process that could potentially solve organ shortages and save countless lives.
Chinese researchers grew partially human early-stage kidneys inside embryonic pig...
A new study in non-human primates shows potential for using a manmade monoclonal antibody to help prevent organ rejection after a transplant.
The antibody was successful in promoting graft survival after kidney and pancreatic islet cell transplantations, according to th...
Valance Sams Sr. believes that he has experienced "a miracle."
Sams, now 46, underwent a triple organ transplant in the spring of 2023, making him one of fewer than 50 people in the United States to ever receive three new organs via transplantation.
He received a n...
Genetically engineered pig kidneys are nearing the point where they could provide a government-approved, sustainable supply of organs for sick humans awaiting a transplant, a pair of new studies argue.
A lightly modified pig kidney has continued to function more than a m...
Dennis Deer woke from surgery in utter disbelief that he was breathing normally.
He'd been on supplemental oxygen for two years, and "I didn't know what it was like not to have something on my face,"said Deer, 51, a Chicago-area politician and psychologist.
"I imme...
Many transplant centers routinely practice "list-diving,"when the top candidate among potential organ recipients is skipped in favor of someone further down the list, new research shows.
The top candidate is ranked that way based on an objective algorithm using age, wait...
A new transplant method that "reanimates" donor hearts appears safe and effective, a new clinical trial has found -- in an advance that could substantially expand the supply of donor hearts available in the United States.
The trial tested an approach that allows doctors ...
Storing donor lungs at cool -- but not near freezing -- temperatures can markedly increase the length of time the organs can live outside the human body, a new study suggests.
Lungs stored at 50 degrees Fahrenheit remain healthy and viable for transplant up to four times...
Far more people need an organ transplant than there are organs available.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Dr. Johnny Hong, chief of transplantation at Penn State Health's Mi...
A single nonprofit has what amounts to a monopoly over all organ transplants performed in the United States, but the federal government said Wednesday that it plans to change that.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which has contracted with the Un...
Retired nurse Tannaz Ameli was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer last winter. When chemotherapy failed, her doctors recommended hospice care.
But Ameli, of Minneapolis, had other ideas. She and her husband sought out a pioneering medical team at Northwestern Medici...
Doctors have discovered a way to extend the short shelf life of donor hearts, which could hopefully make more of the organs available to desperate recipients.
Valproic acid (Depakote), which is approved to treat seizures, boosts production of an enzyme that increases the...
Massachusetts legislators have proposed a bill that would allow prison inmates to donate their organs or bone marrow as a way to trim the length of their sentence.
While some experts wonder about th...
A new way of allocating donor lungs that eliminates geographical restrictions could save more lives, new research suggests.
In early 2023, the current U.S. system, which looks for compatible candidates within a fixed radius, will be replaced by the Composite Allocation S...
Once a year, giant motorcycle rallies ride into places like Daytona Beach, Fla., and Sturgis, S.D., bringing hundreds of thousands of people, an economic boost -- and a wave of crash-related deaths.
That means more organs available for donation and the need to be prepar...
The difference between age 69 and age 70 is, of course, just a single year.
Yet, organizations that receive organs for transplant patients are less likely to choose one from the older donor, a
Less than a year after the first-ever transplant of a pig heart into a human patient, doctors are reporting that the heart showed unexpected changes in its electrical system before the recipient ultimately died.
The changes are not believed to have contributed to the pat...
A person with heart failure in dire need of a new heart may have faced delays in getting one during the pandemic when potential donors tested positive f...
Some human livers are tougher than others, lasting more than 100 cumulative years between the organ's original host and a transplant recipient, a new study ...