Ms. Costello Gets a Kidney Transplant, and Other Organ Donation Stories!
Hello everyone, and happy new year! Let's get right into this month's blog post.
Ms. Costello Gets a Kidney Transplant!
This is absolutely amazing news! My teacher that inspired me to start Gift8Lives received her Kidney transplant in early December after waiting for 2 years. I'm so glad she was able to get it, because some people have been waiting for up to 10 years, unfortunately. Her donor was a 19 year old man who was killed in a car accident. His family kept him on life support so that they could coordinate the donation, so I'm very glad that they did so!
Heart Transplant Anniversary!
If you didn't already know, we are nearing the 50th anniversary of the heart transplant! Fifty years ago, Stanford Hospital became the first in the U.S. to do a heart transplant on an adult. Dr. Norman Shumway developed the standard surgical technique for it and performed the operation."Clearly it was groundbreaking, it was very exciting the whole place was abuzz with the news of it," said Dr. Sharon Hunt, Stanford's Medical Director of the Post Heart Transplant Program.Hunt remembers members of the press climbing the outside of the hospital to try to get pictures inside the hospital room. During those early years, transplant patients didn't live long usually a month.Stanford now does between 50 and 70 heart transplants a year and is responsible for numerous advances in the field. Shumway and his team refined the operation tackling problems such as the body rejecting a transplanted heart. Stanford also did research that led to medical teams being able to travel with a donor heart. Dr. Hunt says there's a lot on the horizon including genetically modifying an animal to use its heart for human transplant.
Full Article: http://abc7news.com/health/stanford-marks-50-years-since-first-us-heart-transplant-performed-there/2863207/?sf178294316=1
First Baby Born from a Uterus Transplant!
"The first baby born in the United States to a woman with a uterus transplant was delivered late last month in Dallas, Texas, marking a breakthrough in medical research, doctors announced Friday.
The boy's birth at Baylor University Medical Center marks a major milestone in a clinical trial that began last year, when a team of Dallas doctors became the first in the nation to complete uterine transplant surgeries using organs from deceased and living donors. Similar transplants and births have previously been successful in Sweden. But the Dallas baby's birth marks the first time the procedure has been successfully replicated elsewhere."
Full Article: https://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/first-us-baby-born-from-a-uterus-transplant?utm_term=.walJ3Yd6l#.rtlj7342x
That's all for this month! Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.
