A major achievement was recorded in the medical world on Wednesday when a team of medical surgeons at Johns Hopkins University performed a successful pioneer HIV to HIV liver transplant and also first HIV to HIV kidney transplant in the United States of American.
While briefing the public, Dr Dorry Segev announced as that”A couple of weeks ago, we performed the first HIV-to-HIV liver transplant in the world and the first HIV-to-HIV kidney transplant in the United States”. He noted that the feat was made possible with the passage of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, which before 2013; it was illegal for HIV-positive patients to donate organs in the United States. The act allows HIV-positive donors to donate organs to patients infected with the AIDS-causing virus.
Until the law was changed, thousands of patients with HIV in need of organ transplants often risked death while waiting for a donated organ, he said. He further stated that “we were throwing away organs from donors infected with HIV just because they were infected. These were potentially good organs,” Segev is a professor of surgery and director of the epidemiology research group in organ transplantation at the Baltimore-based medical school.
It is interesting to know that the liver and kidney were gotten from a deceased HIV-infected donor.
According to Segev, close to 122,000 people are on transplant waiting lists in the United States at any time. Each year, about 500 to 600 potential organ donors who are HIV-positive die. Segev said his team is now teaching transplant centers across the country “the protocols we put together and sharing our experience and safety measures.”
Presently, this procedure is restricted to deceased donors, but Segev said he and his colleagues have started researching the possible use of organs from living HIV-positive donors. It’s important, therefore, to consider if the donor has drug-resistant HIV, she said. “All the recipients are on HIV medications already, so we have to take into account matching regimens of drugs,” she said.
Durand, another surgeon said that it is important to ensure that the immunosuppressant drugs needed to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ don’t interfere with the HIV drugs.The team was optimistic of future successes in organ transplants as she remarks that they are encouraged by these first transplants and desire to extend this possibility to other patients who are waiting on the transplant list,”
SOURCES
David Bernstein, M.D., chief, division of hepatology, Northwell Health, Manhasset, N.Y.; March 30, 2016, media briefing with Dorry Segev, M.D., Ph.D., professor, surgery and director, epidemiology research group in organ transplantation, and Christine Durand, M.D., assistant professor, medicine and oncology, both Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore
Contact us at the Consulting WP office nearest to you or submit a business inquiry online.
Everyone wants a doctor that shows you that you are important to them and not just any other patient or number on their filing list. At Emobile, it’s not only the Consultant that shows you this. From the front desk to the nurses station up to the consultant, that’s the experience you get. This is indeed a hospital worth recommending to so many and I have.
