Transplant
Q&A: Dr. Christopher Wigfield on the Future of Lung Transplantation
Dr. Christopher Wigfield, the newest member of our lung transplant team, talks about the complexities of lung transplantation and what’s in store to improve patient outcomes.
Donald Rowley, MD, 1923-2013
Donald Rowley, MD, a pioneer in discovering how the immune system functions and the inventor of the gel electrode, a crucial tool that monitors cardiac activity, died at his home early Sunday, Feb. 24, after a long battle with congestive heart failure. He was 90 years old.
Team Aims to Pair Patients with Living Donors Through Online Form
A team of transplant nurses and web experts at the University of Chicago Medicine is launching an online assessment form to help streamline the process of pairing patients in need of a kidney with living donors. Complete with Facebook “like” and “send” buttons, the 14-question evaluation can be posted to social networks, connecting potential donors […]
MacLean Fellows Conference to focus on ethics of organ transplant, global health and pediatric immunization
The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics will host its 24th annual conference on ethical issues this Friday and Saturday, Nov. 9-10, at the University of Chicago Law School. This year’s conference will also feature the presentation of the second annual $50,000 MacLean Center Prize in Clinical Ethics to Peter Singer, MD, MPH, senior scientist […]
Permanent Acceptance: Improving Transplant Outcomes While Still Fighting Infection
Organ transplants are a lifesaving procedure for thousands of people each year. But transplant recipients have to take medications the rest of their lives to suppress their immune system enough so that it doesn’t attack the organ. This is similar to the way the body fights off infection, by attacking the viruses and bacteria it […]
LabBook August 10, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on the blog, link to news stories about our faculty and studies, and briefly summarize a handful of recent publications by our researchers. This […]
Fairness and Efficiency: Designing a Better Kidney Allocation System
Each year approximately 11,000 people receive kidney transplants from deceased donors, but nearly 100,000 people are on the waiting list for a deceased donor kidney. This means that people with end-stage renal disease who desperately need a new kidney can spend years on dialysis, waiting for a transplant. For the past seven years, the United […]
Grasping at Straws while Gasping for Air
The phone call came in early October, 2011. “You could sense the tone of it right away,” recalls pulmonologist Imre Noth, MD, who runs one of the country’s largest practices for patients with pulmonary fibrosis. “There was just something about the voice on the line.” The conference call came from the data and safety monitoring […]
Organ donation in Illinois gets a little help from friends
by Dianna Douglas Forty years ago, discussing your plans to donate your organs if you were to become brain dead was considered extremely poor taste. “People didn’t talk about death and demise in polite company,” said Allen Anderson, MD, associate professor of medicine. He’s director of the advanced heart failure program at the University of […]
When Geography Trumps Need in Lung Transplants
Few people realize the important role that math plays in organ transplants. Complex formulas convert medical information about each patient, including diagnosis, age, and test results, into a single “allocation score” that determines who has priority when an organ becomes available. One factor not included in these calculators is proximity of the organ to a […]
