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19-year-old gives friend a kidney
Faced with watching a lifelong friend suffer through dialysis, a 19-year-old Cooper City native donates one of his kidneys.
The night before Jonas Read became a kidney donor, his mother was almost frantic. Dressed in his hospital gown, he mocked her concern: ``Oh, no, you can't go driving around. What if you get in a car accident? No, you can't do this because you're gonna die. No, you can't do that because you're gonna die. Everything was gonna kill me!''
To calm her, Read, 19, said: ``If I die, give Austin my kidney.''
Just hours away from his surgery last month to donate one of his two healthy kidneys to free his lifelong friend from the clutches of dialysis, this teen with dirty-blond hair, button earrings, chin stud and platinum beard was all too calm about becoming a donor.
The surgery at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center was his moral obligation, he felt, to help Austin Pence, 22, a friend since both were toddlers modeling on South Beach, earning $75 an hour. ''We were so young back then,'' Read says.
He's so young now, as well, to be making such a life-saving decision that he considers ``no big deal.''
But it is a big deal. As with all major surgeries, there are risks -- infection, pneumonia, blood clots, death. There's also the risk of a collapsed lung because of its proximity to the kidney. And although studies have shown living with one kidney does not increase health risks, heavy trauma could lead to the loss of a single kidney -- and dire consequences.
The benefit of donor surgery, however, is the gift of life.
In the decades since kidney transplants first appeared as leading-edge surgery, the procedure has become increasingly common -- more than 16,000 were performed last year. Most transplants involve one family member donating to another, but friend-to-friend or stranger-to-stranger transplants are not uncommon.
''There's about a 10 percent chance to get an identical match'' outside your family, says Dr. Linda Chen, assistant professor of surgery at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine and director of the live kidney donor program.
''When [Jonas] got tested, my insides felt like it was right,'' Pence says. ``It was really a weird feeling.''
Jonas felt it was right, too. Faced with watching a lifelong friend suffer through dialysis, a 19-year-old Cooper City native donates one of his kidneys. ... more -
Leading hospital makes £4m selling 'inferior' livers from UK donors to f...
One of Britain's leading hospitals has made more than £4million by giving livers from UK donors to private foreign patients.
Over the past five years, surgeons from King's College Hospital in South London have performed 50 liver transplants, with each patient paying around £80,000.
Of these, 22 came from the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. One of Britain's leading hospitals has made more than £4million by giving livers from UK donors to private foreign patients. ... more -
Doctors debate when to declare organ donors dead
NEW YORK — A report on three heart transplants involving babies is focusing attention on a touchy issue in the organ donation field: When and how can someone be declared dead?
For decades, organs have typically been removed only after doctors determine that a donor's brain has completely stopped working. In the case of the infants, all three were on life support and showed little brain function, but they didn't meet the criteria for brain death.
With their families' consent, the newborns were taken off ventilators and surgeons in Denver removed their hearts minutes after they stopped beating. The hearts were successfully transplanted, and the babies who got the hearts survived.
"It seemed like there was an unmet need in two situations," said Dr. Mark Boucek, who led the study at Children's Hospital in Denver. "Recipients were dying while awaiting donor organs. And we had children dying whose family wanted to donate, and we weren't able to do it."
The procedure — called donation after cardiac death — is being encouraged by the federal government, organ banks and others as a way to make more organs available and give more families the option to donate.
But the approach raises legal and ethical issues because it involves children and because, according to critics, it violates laws governing when organs may be removed.
As the method has gained acceptance, the number of cardiac-death donations has steadily increased. Last year, there were 793 cardiac-death donors, about 10% of all deceased donors, according to United Network for Organ Sharing. Most of those were adults donating kidneys or livers.
"It is a much more common scenario today that it would have been even five years ago," said Joel Newman, a spokesman for the network.
The heart is rarely removed after cardiac death because of worries it could be damaged from lack of oxygen. In brain-death donations, the donor is kept on a ventilator to keep oxygen-rich blood flowing to the organs until they are removed.
The Denver cases are detailed in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. The editors, noting the report is likely to be controversial, said they published it to promote discussion of cardiac-death donation, especially for infant heart transplants.
They also included three commentaries and assembled a panel discussion with doctors and ethicists. Many of the remarks related to the widely accepted "dead donor rule" and the waiting time between when the heart stops and when it is removed to make sure that it doesn't start again on its own.
More? Follow the link. NEW YORK — A report on three heart transplants involving babies is focusing attention on a touchy issue in the organ donation field: W... more -
Declaring Organ Donor Death Stirs Up Controversy
Many doctors are struggling to determine how when and how someone can be declared dead in the case of organ donors.
In the past, doctors have had to determine that donor’s brain has completely stopped working, but a new report on three heart transplants involving babies is raising new controversy.
The report shows that although the three babies were on life support and showed little brain activity, they failed to meet the general criteria for brain death.
Each of the infants’ families had given consent for doctors to remove their ventilators as surgeons in Denver worked to remove their hearts.
All of the infants who received the hearts survived.
"It seemed like there was an unmet need in two situations," said Dr. Mark Boucek, who led the study at Children's Hospital in Denver. "Recipients were dying while awaiting donor organs. And we had children dying whose family wanted to donate, and we weren't able to do it."
The procedure - called donation after cardiac death - is being encouraged by the federal government, organ banks and others as a way to make more organs available and give more families the option to donate.
But the approach raises legal and ethical issues because it involves children and because, according to critics, it violates laws governing when organs may be removed. Many doctors are struggling to determine how when and how someone can be declared dead in the case of organ donors. ... more -
Surgery unit calls for donor law
The country’s first dedicated transplant unit opened in Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in February, allowing the complex surgery to be carried out by locally based doctors for the first time.
However, in order to carry out a wide range of transplants, the centre requires a steady supply of organs and doctors say a change in the law is needed to allow them to harvest livers, hearts and other organs from patients declared brain-dead.
They are also calling for a donor registration scheme, under which people prepared to donate organs in the event of their death would carry a donor card. In cases where no card was carried, the decision would be left to the patient’s next of kin.
The centre, which is managed by the US-based Cleveland Clinic, has so far carried out four kidney transplants and is preparing to perform its first liver transplant early next year. Within the coming year, the centre will diversify further to include pancreas and heart operations and eventually hopes to establish a multi-organ transplant programme.
Dr Abrar Khan, the chairman of the transplant programme, is now in discussions with the Abu Dhabi Health Authority about the possibility of legislation known as the “Brain-death law”, to increase the number of patients whose lives can be saved by transplants.
Such legislation is in effect in all GCC countries except the UAE and in countries around the world including the UK, US and Canada.
In Saudi Arabia, a decree allowing the use of organs from brain-dead patients was issued in 1982, and 85 per cent of transplants in the GCC are carried out in the kingdom. Between 1982 and 2007, there were 5,366 kidney transplants, with organs taken from brain-dead donors in 1,794 cases.
Death, said Dr Khan, could be defined in two ways. “Either your heart stops and you stop breathing or the other way is if you are brain-dead, in which case, your heart is still functioning, but your brain isn’t.” The country’s first dedicated transplant unit opened in Sheikh Khalifa Medical City in February, allowing the complex surgery to be ca... more -
Man With Suicide Victim's Heart Takes Own Life
The man ended up marrying the heart donor's former wife -- but the article never states that as the possible reason by both the original heart's owner, and the new owner killed themselves. Coincidence? The man ended up marrying the heart donor's former wife -- but the article never states that as the possible reason by both the o... more
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Brown Backs Automatic Organ Donation
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed a radical overhaul in the way body organs are donated in Britain.
At present, individuals have to elect to be placed on a donor register or carry a donor card in order for their organs to be used after their death. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph over the weekend, the Prime Minister gave his support to a new system, similar to Spain's, based on 'presumed consent' that automatically includes everyone unless they specifically opt out.
Brown acknowledged the topic is a sensitive one but supported his decision by saying:
"In Britain we have 14.9 million people on the organ donor register - which is around 24 per cent of the population. In terms of actual donors (not just people willing to give, but those whose organs are actually used) we have a rate of about 13 donors per million in our population. This compares with about 22 per million in France, 25 per million in America and around 35 per million in Spain - the best in the world. That is why I want to start a debate in this country about whether we should take steps to move towards a new system designed to enable far more of us to benefit from transplant surgery - one that better reflects survey findings that around 90 per cent of us are in favour of organ donation."
To me a dead body is a dead body. If parts can be recycled to help the living then they should be. What do you think? Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed a radical overhaul in the way body organs are donated in Britain. ... more -
Let Them Donate
Calls for a revolution in the way post-death organ donations are handled are picking up speed, with the Observer newspaper today launching a campaign for a sea change in the law. With government ministers joining in with the calls for a system of 'presumed consent', it's looking likely that a meaningful attempt to tackle the unnecessary deaths caused by the acute shortage of donors in the UK will be put in place soon. Calls for a revolution in the way post-death organ donations are handled are picking up speed, with the Observer newspaper today launc... more
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4 patients get HIV from organ donor
A very troubling case.
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Love and Organs
With the help of a Blackberry, a pager, a computer and a complicated system called "Donornet," Travis Watson coordinates the intricate exchange between organ donors and their recipients, including Amy, 26, who's receiving a kidney from her 24 year-old boyfriend Michael. With the help of a Blackberry, a pager, a computer and a complicated system called "Donornet," Travis Watson coordinates the... more
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Organ Donors
