Free Republic

A procedure that inserts fecal matter from a healthy person into the intestines of someone with diarrhea has been found to be a better treatment than antibiotics.

Brothers Elfego and Lorenzo Arroyo each suffers from a deadly liver disease. But despite the urgency of their situation, the Chicago residents have struggled to receive organ transplants. The Arroyo brothers are undocumented immigrants and lack insurance, friends and relatives say. Like others in their situation, they have been denied care that could increase their chances of survival due to their residency status. "We know there are thousands of Latinos and (non-)Latinos with no documents who are facing the same situation," Rev. Jose Landaverde said Monday during a news conference at Our Lady of Guadalupe Angelican Catholic Mission in Chicago's...

. Good afternoon gardeners! After a high of 81 degrees yesterday, we are at 50 degrees today after experiencing high winds and 3 inches of rain last night. Radar would indicate that there is more rain to come, as I see it in Texas right now. I hope that all of our Texas gardeners are catching up on much needed rain! PTL!We have so many new gardeners in our group, in addition to folks with the desire to begin gardening, that I thought a primer on transplanting might be useful. Please feel free to add to the discussion with...

(CBS) Doctors and engineers have joined forces to bring the world its first lower jaw transplant, using a prosthetic jaw made by a 3D printer. An 83-year-old Belgian woman underwent the operation last June, after suffering from an infection that rapidly ate away her jaw. In order to keep breathing, chewing, talking and feeling in her jaw, the patient had no option other than the complete removal of her mandible (lower jaw). Scientists at the University of Hasselt BIOMED Research Institute in Belgium developed a custom made implant using 3D printing of titanium powder. The design, processing and production of...

Two Mexican medics ridiculed for dropping a human heart while it was being transported to a hospital for a transplant can breathe a little more easily after the recipient, Erika Hernandez, was discharged from hospital. The men were widely lampooned after they spilled the contents of a cooler box containing the organ while rushing to the La Raza hospital in Mexico City two weeks ago. But the operation went ahead as planned and proved successful. "I cannot believe that I'm still here and well," Hernandez said. "It is thanks to the person who donated the heart I can be here."...

Paramedics drop organ in front of photographers after it was rushed to hospital by police helicopter for transplantIt was a heart-stopping moment – or nearly so: rushing from a helicopter, two Mexican medics dropped a human heart being ferried to hospital for a transplant. And to compound their embarrassment, press photographers were there to capture the mishap. Thankfully, the transplant was carried out successfully, although that has not stopped the medics being widely ridiculed online. The heart was being transported by a police helicopter to a hospital in Mexico City on Wednesday, in what police described as "a rapid,...

(Medical Xpress) -- Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a way to stimulate a rat’s stem cells after a liver transplant as a means of preventing rejection of the new organ without the need for lifelong immunosuppressant drugs. The need for anti-rejection medicines, which carry serious side effects, is a major obstacle to successful long-term transplant survival in people. With a combination of a very low, short-term dose of an immunosuppressive drug to prevent immediate rejection and four doses of a medication that frees the recipient’s stem cells from the bone marrow to seek out and populate the donor organ, the...

A man who developed cancer in his windpipe has gotten a new trachea, grown entirely from his own stem cells over two days in a laboratory in Sweden. The operation is remarkable because it's the first time a completely synthetically grown organ has been transplanted into a patient, The Guardian reported. "The synthetic trachea was created by growing the patient's own stem cells on an artificial 'scaffold', which British scientists helped design.

CARACAS (Reuters) – The most verbose president on the planet is strangely silent. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, an avid tweeter whose speeches routinely go on for hours, has barely communicated in public since a June 10 operation in Cuba that has become increasingly shrouded in mystery and speculation as the days have gone by. Usually on TV several times a day, Chavez has also been invisible except for a photo session with Cuba's President Raul Castro and its revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, where Chavez was smiling and upright but notably frailer.

Mother to Give Daughter Uterus in Transplant to Give Birth Stockholm, Sweden -- A mother has decided to give her daughter her uterus in what may become the first-ever transplant, according to a medical team in Sweden that recently made the announcement. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/06/14/mother-to-give-daughter-uterus-in-transplant-to-give-birth/

Dallas Wiens, 26, of Texas, who had previously come to terms with a vastly deformative injury which virtually erased his face, expressed gratitude to the family of his new face's donor and doctors remarked on his transformation as he made his first public appearance after becoming the first recipient of a full facial transplant in the United States. Most of Wiens' face was burned off during an electrical accident in 2008 in Fort Worth. He was working on a cherry picker, finishing a painting job at Ridglea Baptist Church, when the machine hit a power line. He awoke from a...

A former Cayuga County resident serving an 18-to-40-year state prison sentence for rape and sodomy is on a heart donor list and is undergoing a heart transplant evaluation at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. Coxsackie Correctional Facility inmate Kenneth L. Pike was flown from Albany to Rochester Monday, and hospital officials confirmed that a Kenneth Pike is at the hospital and is listed in guarded condition. Pike is being evaluated for a heart transplant, is on the donor list and will most likely die without the procedure. the average first-year cost of a heart transplant comes in at $787,700. In...

A transplant patient contracted AIDS from the kidney of a living donor, in the first documented case of its kind in the U.S. since screening for HIV began in the mid-1980s. It turns out the donor had unprotected gay sex in the 11 weeks between the time he tested negative and the time the surgery took place in 2009. In a report Thursday on the New York City case, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that organ donors have repeat HIV tests a week before surgery. "The most sensitive test needs to be done as close as possible...

The nation's organ-transplant network is considering giving younger, healthier people preference over older, sicker patients for the best kidneys. Instead of giving priority primarily to patients who have been on the waiting list longest, the new rules would match recipients and organs to a greater extent based on factors such as age and health to try to maximize the number of years provided by each kidney - the most sought-after organ for transplants. "We're trying to best utilize the gift of the donated organ," said Kenneth Andreoni, an associate professor of surgery at Ohio State University who chairs the committee...

Cheney Back in Public, Thinner, With Heart Pump *snip* The LVAD is implanted next to the heart to help its main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, pump blood through the body. Such devices are used mainly for short periods, to buy potential transplant candidates time as they await a donor organ. Cardiologists said that in Cheney's case, the pump is likely a "bridge" that will keep him alive until he can receive a heart transplant. Many cardiac experts said at the time of his surgery that Cheney may be only one step away from a transplant but could find himself...

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — He knows all about the stages of grief. Denial and isolation top the list. But how can he possibly deny all that's happened? In the mirror, he sees the 14-inch scar across his abdomen. Beneath the scar, lodged below his heart, is a piece of Ryan, his brother. Journal entry, Aug. 22: "I missed you today Ryan. It hurt so much I felt like my heart had blisters on it. God, why do we need death to reawaken what we should already know?" The grief comes in waves, sometimes gently washing over him, sometimes crashing down...

The researchers created "working livers" the size of a walnut which functioned normally in laboratory conditions. They believe that in around five years they will be able to upscale the process and transfer the procedure from laboratory to hospital. The development could eventually solve the transplant shortage and also remove the need for powerful drugs to prevent the body rejecting the organ. "We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we're at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients," said the project director, Associate Professor Shay Soker

Sep. 24, 2010 (Business Wire) -- Mayo Clinic has initiated the first clinical Hand Transplant Program in the United States and is now enrolling patients. This program offers hand transplantation as a clinically available option for patients with bilateral hand injuries or amputations. This allows patients to embark on this option of reconstructive surgery without being required to enroll in experimental trials.

...lately, I have discovered that I, like the public at large, have been completely misinformed as to what really goes on when organs are donated.

Vincent Liew waited five years for the kidney that was supposed to change his life. Instead, the organ ended it. The kidney came from a woman who had uterine cancer, but she and doctors didn't know it. Once her disease was discovered after the transplant, Liew's doctors highly doubted it could spread to him. But in seven months, Liew was killed by cancer that his autopsy linked to the transplant. His death, the subject of a medical malpractice trial in which closing arguments were scheduled for Thursday, is believed to be the only reported instance of uterine cancer apparently being...

Tampa, Fla. (Feb. 01, 2010) – A research team from the National Taiwan University Hospital has evaluated the efficiency of transplanted hepatocyte (liver) cells in animal models severely damaged by two kinds of chemical toxicity to see whether and how transplanted hepatocytes were able to efficiently repopulate the toxin-induced, severely damaged livers. The results of this study are published in the current double issue of Cell Transplantation (18:10/11) and are freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/ . The study was carried out in the on-going effort to evaluate hepatocyte transplantation as an alternative to liver transplantation, not only because of the...

A liver transplant recipient was given a public intoxication warning Monday afternoon after he registered a 0.39 percent blood-alcohol level, according to La Crosse police reports. The 34-year-old man was found on a curb at Springbrook Way and Cliffside Drive about 3 p.m., reports stated. He could not stand or walk unassisted when a family member took him home, police noted. He was taken to Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center for detoxification.

Cynthia Rice told me she wouldn’t want to wish this upon anybody. She was talking about her husband Jim's illness, but could have been talking about ObamaCare.

STOUGHTON — Jordana Bryan traveled over 2,500 miles from Twin Falls, Idaho, to Massachusetts for one, selfless purpose: to donate her kidney to someone she met via the Internet. Bryan, 56, met Charles “Chickie” Hoffman, a 69-year-old electrical contractor from Stoughton, on the Canton-based Web site MatchingDonors.com, a nonprofit organization that connects organ donors with patients in need of transplants. Several months since their initial Internet meeting and dozens of invasive tests later, Thursday morning, Bryan and Hoffman will undergo a kidney transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Bryan, a professional caregiver by trade, is no stranger to the...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2009 – Doctors from Walter Reed Army Medical Center here and the University of Miami collaborated to perform the first pancreas islet cell transplant Thanksgiving Day on an airman whose pancreas was injured so severely in Afghanistan that it had to be removed. Army Col. (Dr.) Craig D. Shriver, chief of general surgery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., describes groundbreaking pancreas islet cell transplant surgery performed Nov. 26, 2009, to reporters during a Dec. 15, 2009, news conference. Dr. Pascal Goldschmidt, dean of the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami,...

Thirteen extremely sick patients. Highly skilled surgeons who performed 26 operations, a quick-thinking organ transplant expert and big-hearted donors. They were all part of a recent record-setting kidney swap in the nation's capital that was part of a major push to get transplants to patients who might not usually qualify. And when it was over, all 13 people had received lifesaving kidneys, the Associated Press reports. So Georgetown University Hospital's kidney transplant director, Dr. Keith Melancon, came up with an unusual option: If both Williams and Irene Otten could get a near- perfect donor kidney (a kidney that just a...

BOSTON (Reuters) – Bone marrow transplants, already used to treat some children with sickle cell disease, also may cure some adults with this deadly genetic defect that causes red blood cells to contort, U.S. scientists said on Wednesday. > Destroying a patient's bone marrow and replacing it with healthy marrow from a donor, often a sibling, is considered too risky for adults. > This approach leaves enough space inside the patient's bones for the donated marrow to find a home and produce enough healthy red blood cells to compensate for the defective ones. >

LANCASTER, Pa. – The mother of the nation's first double hand transplant patient says he's out of the hospital and looking forward to returning to his wife and daughter in Georgia. Doris Schafer told the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era that her son, Jeff Kepner, visited her over the weekend in Lancaster. She says he plans to return to Augusta, Ga., at the end of this week. Schafer says Kepner is considerably happier than when she saw him in June at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, about a month after the transplant. She says her son still has no feeling...

Now, I did a little bit of digging, and here's what I came up with. According to our president: Obama Statement on 35th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade Decision =========="Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it's never been more important to protect a woman's right to choose. Last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women's health. With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at...

They were strangers living in different parts of the world till about three months ago, when terminal liver failure brought them together in Delhi. Now, 18-month-old Nigerian boy Dike and 44-year-old Mumbai resident Priya have become India's first patients to successfully undergo a swap liver transplant surgery. Unable to find suitable donors with a matching blood group for either Dike or Priya, doctors from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital decided to try out a liver swap, much on the lines of a swap kidney transplant, which has now become common. Five months after his birth, doctors diagnosed Dike with Billiary Atresia...

Many may remember that my son's daughter and only child at that time -- was a victim of Acute Myleogenous Leukemia (adult form), diagnosed when she was nine years old. I have been a strong proponent of bone marrow transplants, because Jennifer is living proof of the success of that procedure. This started just over 11 years ago and the transplant did not take place for about three years -- Jennifer had about a 50/50 chance of survival -- which rose and fell over that time. Jennifer is now engaged, an incredibly beautiful young lady and she is pregnant. This...

The story of Corp. Benjamin Kopp's life is one about completely dedicating yourself to your country and others. Kopp, of Rosemount, gave his life serving his country. The 21-year-old died July 18 from injuries he suffered after being shot in the leg in Afghanistan while saving the lives of six of his fellow soldiers on July 10. If giving his life wasn't the ultimate sacrifice, even after his death, Kopp kept on giving. Judy Meikle, of Chicago, says she has been long awaiting a heart transplant. Two weeks ago the 57-year-old got a call from her close friend Maria Burud,...

CLEVELAND (AP) - Five years ago, a shotgun blast left a ghastly hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from a dead woman. Connie Culp stepped forward Tuesday to show off the results of the nation's first face transplant, and her new look was a far cry from the puckered, noseless sight that made children run away in horror. Culp's expressions are still a bit wooden, but she can talk, smile, smell and taste her food again. Her speech is at times a little tough to understand. Her face is...

TORONTO, April 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A two month-old child at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, described in the media as "dying," has defied doctor's predictions and continued to live after the removal of a respirator. The respirator was removed in the expectation that the child would stop breathing, and that her heart could then be harvested for transplant. Her parents have expressed their disappointment that another child who is being cared for at the hospital will now not receive their daughter's heart. ~Snip~ Kaylee Wallace was born with a condition called Joubert Syndrome, which causes a malformation of the...

A leading French surgeon says he has now effectively carried out a full face transplant after two operations in the same number of weeks. Professor Laurent Lantieri, who has performed three of the world's six partial face transplants, said every feature had now been transferred.

I’d like to ask for your help. And it just might help save someone’s life. In 1991, after living with diabetes and its complications for 20 years, I was fortunate to receive a kidney and a pancreas in an organ transplant operation. Since then, I’ve tried to give back wherever I can, in the hopes that it might benefit someone in the future. I am involved in a transplant study that is trying to discover how the body reacts to transplanted organs, and how the use of immunosuppressive drugs can be minimized. But we need more patients in the study...

A Long Island man's quest to end his messy divorce took a new turn this week as he demanded his estranged wife give back the kidney he donated to her in 2001. It's a touching tale and one that has been met with ridicule from area divorce attorneys. "She ripped out his heart, but he doesn't get to rip out her kidney," says Lisa Bloom, a legal analyst for CBS' The Early Show. Calling this a publicity stunt by the scorned husband, Dr. Richard Batista, Bloom says there is absolutely no chance his soon-to-be ex-wife, Dawnell, will have to give...

Two medical breakthroughs reported last week brings very strong evidence for continue research in the stem cell research field. In one case a new airway need to be replaced and the second case knee injuries needed cartilage.

Freeper friends, I work with Zoe's great-aunt, this little girl needs a heart transplant soon.LasVegasDave Please visit the web site for more information about Zoe. I have pasted some of the daily coments about Zoe's progress.Nov 18Dr. Boyle decided not to punish Zoe for dietarys transgression. He let her have her 15cc every hour and he let her have solid food for the first time in 2 weeks. We tried french fried with no salt but they were too dry. I hit the cafeteria and found 4 of the driest pieces of cantaloupe I could find (fruit’s full of water...

A woman has been given a new section of windpipe created from her own stem cells in an operation that could revolutionise surgery. Claudia Castillo, 30, who lives in Barcelona, has become the first person to be given a whole organ tailor-made for her in laboratories across Europe. A graft from a donor was used, but because it has been imbued with Ms Castillo’s own cells, there is no sign that her body will reject the organ. Researchers and surgeons from Britain, Italy and Spain collaborated to grow tissue from Ms Castillo’s own bone marrow stem cells, using them to...

When the South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard carried out the first heart transplant in December 1967, the world held its breath. His patient, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, lived for only another 18 days. The drugs he needed to stop his body rejecting the new organ compromised his immune system to such an extent he couldn’t fight off other illnesses, and he died of pneumonia. But the precedent had been set: the most powerful and emotionally iconic of human organs could be taken from the body of a dead person to give the chance of an extended life to another. It was...

THE world's only transplant recipient of two full arms has spoken of his "indescribable feeling of being a whole man again".

  Infertility fear: Emma Smith, 37, with her son Oliver   Baby boy for woman in double transplantSophie Goodchild and Anna Davis 10.10.08 A woman who had a double organ transplant has defied the odds to become a mother, the Standard can reveal today.Emma Smith, 37, feared she may be infertile because of the side-effects of her anti-rejection drugs.But last week, the former secretary from Hitchin in Hertfordshire gave birth without complications to her first child 6lb baby Oliver.She is the first woman in Britain to deliver a child by Caesarean section after receiving donor kidneys and a pancreas.Her...

Fresh off his tour of heart clinics throughout America, Barak Obama has announced his intention to perform a heart transplant at Johns Hopkins within days. "I have seen the clinics, I've spoken to doctors, nurses, and assistants, and my skill with scalpel and suction has now been tried and tested through careful observation." "I also remind you that for 143 days I was intimately involved in the health care debate in the Senate and for another year on the campaign trail." "What more experience could anyone demand?" asked an incredulous Obama. My heart surgery tour should put to rest any...

For Marisa Hester, a Pentecostal Christian from Prattville, Ala., choosing an outfit for an ultra-Orthodox Crown Heights wedding wasn’t easy. Sorting through her two sets of formalwear, she eventually opted for a knee-length floral skirt and a high-necked black chiffon blouse, embellished with sparkling beads. She worried, however, that her slightly sheer sleeves were too revealing and would insult her newfound family. But at the June 24 wedding, the bride and her relatives could not have been less offended. A year ago, Hester, 26, gave an invaluable gift to the bride’s father, Hershey Fellig, 47, whose struggle she had read...

Patients awaiting organ transplants should decide in advance whether they’re willing to take substandard kidneys, livers and other organs, including those at risk for infectious diseases such as HIV or hepatitis C.

(edit)Kelly, 61, who is also a retired Marine sergeant, was immediately tested to see if he was a match, and as luck would have it, he was.“It was really admirable to see these two men who had defied fear in battle and situations of severe adversity to come together,” Molmenti told FOXNews.com. “Now they’re fighting the biggest fight of their whole lives and they're helping each other with this precious gift.” (edit)

Yesterday, the Mail told the extraordinary story of how a heart transplant recipient in America committed suicide - just like the man whose heart he had received 12 years previously. In another extraordinary twist, it emerged that the recipient had also married the donor's former wife. So can elements of a person's character - or even their soul - be transplanted along with a heart? One woman who believes this to be the case is CLAIRE SYLVIA, a divorced mother of one. She was 47 and dying from a disease called primary pulmonary hypertension when, in 1988, she had a...

As some of you know, I haven't been as active here lately due to an ongoing illness. I have kidney failure due to Polycystic Kidney Disease (an inherited disease), and have been on dialysis since August (and on the transplant list since July 2005). Fortunately, I've still been able to work, but I didn't have much energy left to Freep and do other things I've enjoyed in the past. I got a call today from the transplant department telling me that there is a kidney available. So, I'll be going in tomorrow to get a kidney transplant. Of course, it's...

I have just received word that my niece is in the hospital and in very, very, very bad health. Her liver has failed and her kidneys are now failing. She is on the transplant list, but without a new liver she won’t be leaving the hospital. Please join with me in lifting her up to God for His healing and blessing, asking for a new liver for her. Prayers for her family are also appreciated.