Thursday Morning Weird and Amazing Medical News

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Thursday Morning Weird and Amazing Medical News

Thursday Morning Weird and Amazing Medical News

In the spirit of National Donate Life Month -- An Opportunity for Recipients to Express Gratitude and Remembrance I thought the story below would be appreciated.

Surgeons remove healthy kidney through donor's vagina

From Tina @ J & F Blog Good Morning Folks, wow, this is pretty amazing . Because I'm a woman I can relate to delivering a kidney , interesting story.

Back in February of 2009 a woman delivered her kidney for donation, how inspiring.

She deserves the Auntie Em Award, the kidney was for her niece.

Time To Ponder:

Transplant Waiting list candidates 106,976 as of today 8:56am

Every day, 18 people die while waiting for a transplant of a vital organ, such as a heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, lung or bone marrow.

Liver and Kidney waiting list candidates as of today 9:04am

Kidney84,402Liver15,939

Record Number of Patients Await Kidney Transplants

By Mark J. April 2010

Worst of all, 4,456 patients on the waiting list died in 2009 because of the kidney shortage, and another 1,941 patients were removed from the list for being “too sick to transplant.†That means that every day last year, an average of more than 17 patients on the kidney waiting list either died or faced a certain death.

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Because of the lack of available donors in this country, 4,573 kidney patients, 1,506 liver patients, 371 heart patients and 234 lung patients died 2008 while waiting for life-saving organ transplants.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV), viral hepatitis is the leading cause of liver cancer and the most common reason for a liver transplant in the US.

Anyone who is a frequent reader of this blog is sadly aware of the organ shortage. Over the years friends have lost their battle with HCV waiting for a liver.

The good news is that there are new drugs in trials and soon to be FDA approved to treat HCV. Two of those drugs are Telaprevir and Boceprevir, when combined with standard therapy, these drugs increase the SVR rates ( which means a chance for a cure) in former non-responders with genotype 1, from 15% to around 70%. We all await with anticipation the future of HCV therapy.

Here is your morning dose of wonderful weird medical science.CNN) -- In what is being heralded as a "first-ever procedure," surgeons removed a healthy kidney through a donor's vagina, at the s Hopkins Medical Center

Although the procedure has been previously done to extract cancerous and nonfunctioning kidneys that threatened a patient's health, the January 29 surgery was the first time it was done for donation purposes, the center said in a news release issued Monday."The kidney was successfully removed and transplanted into the donor's niece, and both patients are doing fine," Dr. Montgomery, chief of transplant surgery at s Hopkins, said in the release.The surgery is considered less invasive and could pave the way for an increase in organ donations, it added."Removing the kidney through a natural opening should hasten the patient's recovery and provide a better cosmetic result," Montgomery said.He told CNN on Tuesday, "We want to make it easier for people to donate, to have less impact on their lives, [be] in hospital a shorter amount of time and get back to their lives quicker."The woman was

chosen to be the first donor to undergo the procedure because a previous hysterectomy enabled doctors to operate without a uterus obstructing their efforts, he added.The three-hour procedure typically allows the donor to return home within 24 hours.The more traditional surgery requires a 5- to 6-inch incision through the abdominal wall and generally is followed by two or three days of hospitalization."If you asked our patient, she said it was like getting a tooth removed. She was walking that night and left the next day," Montgomery said.The procedure is done by inserting "wand-like cameras and tools" through small incisions in the abdomen and navel.Doctors then insert a hollow tube through the vagina with a bag at the end.Once the kidney is cut loose, surgeons use video from the cameras to guide them as they maneuver the bag around the organ, place it in the tube and pull it out through the vaginal

opening, Montgomery said.A kidney weighs approximately one pound and is roughly the size of a clenched hand.In an effort to ensure a more sterile procedure, the vagina is treated with Betadine, a sterilizing solvent commonly applied during surgery.But some physicians wonder how clean the procedure can actually be."It's good to take such [sterilization] measures," said Dr. Jihad Kaouk, director of laparoscopic and robotic surgery at the Cleveland Clinic. "But the tube touched the vagina. And the bag touched the tube. And the bag touched the kidney"He added, "delivering a kidney from the vagina, which is not sterile -- is it a potential risk or a real risk? We'll find out now."Kaouk also expressed concern over the quality of the kidney once it has been squeezed into a tube."The concept of minimizing incisions and decreasing pain after surgery is always a good idea, but we should always check at what

price," he said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/03/kidney.vagina.surgery/index.html

http://Hepatitis Cnewdrugs.blogspot.com/2010/04/thursday-morning-weird-and-amazing.html