On Thursday, Oct. 22, Transplant communications will present a 90-minute webinar featuring experts discussing public policy/public health issues of great concern to the transplant community. They include: *The potential impact of the H1N1 flu on transplant recipients, living donors, dialysis patients and transplant personnel providing treatment.  *The OPTN/UNOS Board of Directors’ commitment to developing guidelines [Sign in to read the full article...]

Doctors at many dialysis clinics fail to inform thousands of patients about kidney transplantation, potentially shortening lives and costing taxpayers millions of dollars a year, according to an investigation by reporters at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper.   Kidney transplantation adds an average of 10 years to a patient’s life, and a new kidney costs the [Sign in to read the full article...]

A British surgeon has saved a dying heart patient by giving him an artificial heart and injecting him with stem cells to rebuild the damaged muscle in a procedure believed to be a world first, the Times of London reports. Professor Stephen Westaby of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford led the team that operated [Sign in to read the full article...]

British victims of the credit crunch are offering to sell their kidneys for £25,000 (about $40,000) or more to help pay off debts, according to an investigation by The Sunday Times of London. At least a dozen advertisements have appeared on the internet offering kidneys for sale from British “donors”. Five of the sellers corresponded [Sign in to read the full article...]

Women who have had a kidney transplant and have good kidney function can get pregnant and give birth without jeopardizing their health or their transplanted organ, according to a new study from Australian researchers. Vicki Levidiotis, M.D., of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in New South Wales and colleagues analyzed 40 years of pregnancy-related data [Sign in to read the full article...]