New Innovations in Transplantation to Ensure that the Need for Kidneys is Met

Former StaffNew Research from Our Lab, Transplant News

By Rachyl Pines, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Waterman and Dr. Pines are the research committee leads for the National Kidney Registry (NKR), a non-profit organization whose mission is to “save and improve the lives of people facing kidney failure by increasing the quality, speed and number of living donor transplants in the world as well as protecting all living kidney donors.” Learn more about this organization by clicking here. The NKR has been a leader …

Paired exchange programs offer expanded donor protections to address critical disincentives to living donation

Former StaffTransplant News

By Lizbeth Alvarez, Research Associate In the recent article,  looking at “Removing Disincentives to Kidney Donation: A Quantitative Analysis” 1 McCormick et al., highlight the widespread agreement among researchers, physicians, and policy makers that removing financial disincentives to living kidney donation would increase the number of donors and be a fairer process. The article identified seven disincentives that living donors face, including: Cost of travel and lodging at a transplant center Loss of income due …

$1.2 million HRSA grant furthering TREC’s research in paired donation

Former StaffTransplant News

It’s one of the frustrations of the kidney shortage that many people want to donate a kidney to a loved one but can’t, because their blood type is not compatible with their intended recipient. If they donated, their kidney would be rejected. In the past, living donors who did not match their recipients simply couldn’t donate at all. The failure to realize those donations was – and is – a true loss of potential kidneys …

Does shipping a kidney from a live donor hurt the chances of a successful transplant?

Former StaffTransplant News

You’ve watched it unfold on television or the big screen. A doctor, racing against time, removes a kidney and places it into a cooler, and an assistant runs it to a waiting helicopter. It’s flown to another hospital, and is placed into the waiting patient with seconds to spare. In real life, kidneys are often shipped many miles to complete a kidney paired donation (KPD), where a patient who needs a new kidney is matched with …

Kidney vouchers – a “golden ticket” for chronological incompatibility

Former StaffTransplant News

An article recently published in Transplantation1 describes the new kidney voucher program, which allows potential kidney donors to donate at a time that works for them, while “reserving” a priority spot on the kidney transplant waitlist for a patient, often a loved one, to be redeemed later. Drs. Jeffrey L. Veale and Amy D. Waterman, both professors at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), are authors on this article. In the voucher program, a donor …