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My Health™ |  |
AAKP My Health™ now offers new features to help users take charge of their health care. Users can now:
ˇ Receive appointment reminders by email
ˇ Print emergency contact cards
AAKP My Health™ is a free, unique section of the AAKP website, www.aakp.org, that provides you with online tools to be the leader in your health care. With AAKP My Health™, you can:
ˇ Track your lab results
ˇ Log your medications
ˇ List your healthcare team members
ˇ Prepare information for doctor visits
ˇ Test your kidney knowledge
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| Transplant Doctors Concerned About Using Generic Immunosuppressant Drugs | Only about one-fifth of transplant nephrologists and surgeons accept generic immunosuppressive therapies and over one-half agree that they are concerned about the quality of generic medications in the care of transplant patients, according to a new report from BioTrends Research Group Inc. based on online survey results from more than 150 general nephrologists, transplant nephrologists and transplant surgeons.
The report also says more than one-quarter of physicians reported an increase in the use of Novartis's name brand immunosuppressant Myfortic in the past year, primarily at the expense of Roche/Genentech's CellCept, in order to avoid generic substitution. The majority of physicians surveyed also reported a high desire to minimize the use of steroids and calcineurin inhibitors (CNI). Approximately 15 percent reported a decrease in their use of steroids in the past year. |
Cardiac-Death Patient Kidneys Perform as Well as Those from Brain-Dead Patients
Until recently, the majority of donated kidneys came from people who were brain dead - individuals who had suffered brain-stem death, but whose hearts were still beating. Because treatments for head injuries have improved, and the number of serious road accidents have fallen over the last decade, there are now fewer brain-dead donors. Consequently, the number of cardiac-death donors has increased. A cardiac-death donor is one whose heart is not beating.
Some people have expressed concern about the quality of cardiac death donated kidneys, wondering whether they might not perform as well as those from brain-dead donors. A new study concludes that both types of donated organs are as good as each other. Furthermore, cardiac-death donor kidneys should now be treated in the same way as kidneys from brain-dead donors. | |
| Hospital Not Liable for Kidney Transplant Cancer Death | Physicians at a New York hospital have been found not liable for the death of a 37-year old man who died from cancer and receiving a kidney from a woman who had uterine cancer. The donor was a 50-year old woman who had died of a stroke. The man had the transplant operation in February 2002. The following April, the patient's doctors were informed that an autopsy revealed that the donor had undiagnosed uterine cancer. This was the first case of uterine cancer being transmitted by an organ donation, experts said.
The transplant recipient's widow sued the hospital and testified that her husband was told that there was only a very slight risk that the kidney was affected by the cancer and that he was not urged to have the kidney removed. His transplant surgeon testified that he did encourage the patient to have the kidney removed, but the patient did not want to go back on dialysis and insisted on keeping the organ despite the surgeon's advice that the safest plan was to remove it. Although the patient was monitored closely, tests did not reveal anything. However, he began suffering back pain and had the kidney removed about six months after the transplant. He died from cancer three weeks later. The patient's widow alleged that the transplant surgeon had breached the standard of care by not pushing the patient to have the kidney removed as soon as the donor's cancer was discovered. Two other patients also received organ transplants from the same donor and both died from cancer. These cases, however, resulted in monetary awards because the plaintiffs sued the hospital where the organs were harvested and the organ donation network responsible for arranging the donation. |
| Disease Rates Worse in Nonwhite Kidney Donors |  Racial disparities in chronic disease prevalences seen in the general population are also apparent among living kidney donors following surgery. Rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and chronic kidney disease were from 50 to 194 percent higher in black kidney donors relative to whites. The researchers found Hispanic donors also faced higher rates of these diseases than did whites. For the most part, rates of these conditions among donors were similar to those in the general population for each racial-ethnic group. The exception was that, among Hispanics, donors were more likely than nondonors to develop hypertension. |
| FDA Approves Longer Use Of ValcyteŽ for Adult Kidney Transplant Patients | The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved increasing the length of therapy with Valcyte (valganciclovir hydrochloride) in adult kidney transplant patients at high risk for cytomegalovirus (CMV) disease. CMV is a major cause of illness and disease during the first six months following transplantation. It is estimated that 50-80 percent of all adults are infected with the CMV virus, which most often lies dormant in the body throughout life. The virus can be activated at times when the immune system is weakened such as after organ transplantation. CMV infection may cause complications in the lungs, kidneys, nervous system, liver, and gastrointestinal tract.
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| Register Now for the Next AAKP Healthline Call |  The upcoming AAKP HealthLine call, titled I'm Always Tired...Anemia vs. Depression, takes place Wednesday, October 6, from 1:30 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. ET. The call focuses on the possible side effects of chronic kidney disease (CKD) - anemia and depression. Many of the symptoms of anemia and depression are similar including: fatigue, loss of appetite, feelings of sadness and lack of energy.
To register for this HealthLine call, please contact AAKP at (800) 749-2257 or register online. |
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