*(Read more about the new regulations in the April Transplant News)      Under pressure to tighten oversight of the nation’s transplant centers, federal health officials unveiled strict new standards last week.      The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hopes the regulations, which took more than two years to finalize, will prevent “poor or [Sign in to read the full article...]

     In a 16-hour procedure that spanned Feb. 1-2, two organ transplant teams at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Palm Desert, Ca. successfully performed a heart/liver transplant on 23-year-old Kelli Jaunsen. It was the second such operation performed at the hospital and the fifth in the Western U.S.      “Though this was an extremely risky procedure, [Sign in to read the full article...]

     To allay fears that surgeons might try to retrieve the organs of dying patients prematurely, the board of the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) approved standards last week to protect the growing number of donors who have no hope of recovery but who are not officially brain-dead.      In donation after cardiac death, donors [Sign in to read the full article...]

     A story on  Chagas disease in the March 20 on-line edition of Transplant News reported that,  “No organ donors in the United States are now being screened for the parasite, although the organ procurement agency that covers much of Southern California plans to begin testing some donors in mid-April.”      Dr. James J. Wynn, [Sign in to read the full article...]

     Legislation from Republican state senators in Florida to further stem-cell research would actually pose new restrictions that could land scientists in jail, Senate Democrats said Monday.      Broad restrictions on cloning in a bill from Sen. Mike Haridopolos (R-Melbourne), would make it a crime to conduct research using existing embryonic stem-cell lines that long [Sign in to read the full article...]