BIDMC News and Notes
1/7/2009 (4:11:09pm)Tags: transplant organ donationComments: (0)
For the fourth year in a row, BIDMC has received the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Medal of Honor for Organ Donation.
"This award reflects the commitment of numerous BIDMC departments and individuals here and at New England Organ Bank to the many patients awaiting a transplant," said Linda Lentz, Director of Transplant Services at BIDMC's Transplant Institute. "As a representative of the transplant team, I am grateful for the hard work that is done prior to our receiving an organ for one of our patients."
Lentz said every hospital in the country is considered a donor hospital, but only 90 have received the Medal of Honor for Organ Donation four years in a row. Hospitals and organ procurement organizations earn this designation for consistently achieving adjusted donation rates of 75 percent or higher in a single continuous 12-month period, according to Barbara Levine, Hospital Relations Coordinator at the NEOB.
Donation rates refer to the number of patients who are medically suitable to be considered for donation, who actually become donors. For the past four years, BIDMC has met or exceeded this 75 percent rate.
"The award speaks to the committed and coordinated efforts of an entire team of people at BIDMC from administration through line staff," Levine said. "An effective donation process is complex and requires knowledge of the process, commitment and a high degree of coordination and collaboration within BIDMC and between BIDMC and NEOB. High conversion rates certainly have everything to do with families who consent to donation, but before that can happen, we need hospital staff that understand and carry out the best practices that support a donation event."
Levine said BIDMC has many practices in place to facilitate meeting this goal year after year. The Organ Donation Council meets quarterly and includes staff from the intensive care units, the Emergency Department, the operating rooms, Social Work, Ethics, Pastoral Care, Interpreter Services, Administration and the NEOB. Surgeon Jonathan Critchlow, MD, chairs this council, which reviews all donation activity and makes process improvements when necessary.
Levine said a monthly subgroup meets to identify and work on challenges and improvements in a more grass roots effort. Various other subgroups work on related projects, all with goals of process improvement and quality end-of-life care decision-making.
Reaching the conversion rate is a team effort. Levine said staff from the ICUs, Emergency Department, Social Work, Pastoral Care, Respiratory Therapy and other clinical departments work in collaboration with NEOB to complete the donor testing, medically manage the donor, and evaluate and support potential donors and their families. Then the Transplant Institute staff work with the patients who are recipients of organs that are transplanted. "It is the success of this work that is reflected in the Medal of Honor award," Levine said.
2/23/2009 (11:51:19am)Tags: surgery transplant surgeryComments: (0)
Douglas Hanto, MD, PhD, chief of the Transplant Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, has been elected as a director of the American Board of Surgery (ABS).
Hanto, the Lewis Thomas Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, will represent the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS). His six-year-term on the 38-member will begin on July 1.
As a director, Hanto will take part in setting the standards for board certification and maintenance of certification in general surgery and its related subspecialties in the United States. He will also participate in the development of ABS examinations and as an examiner in the oral examinations that are given as part of the board certification process.
In particular, he will contribute his expertise in the field of transplant surgery.
ABS directors are distinguished surgeons in education, research and practice, and represent the principal surgical organizations in the U.S.
The ABS is one of the 24 member boards of the American Board of Medical Specialties.
The American Board of Surgery (ABS) is an independent, non-profit organization founded in 1937 for the purpose of certifying surgeons who have met a defined standard of education, training and knowledge. Surgeons certified by the ABS, known as diplomates, have completed a minimum of five years of surgical residency training following medical school and successfully completed a written and oral examination process administered by the ABS.
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and consistently ranks among the top four in National Institutes of Health funding among independent hospitals nationwide. BIDMC is clinically affiliated with the Joslin Diabetes Center and is a research partner of Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit www.bidmc.org .
9/9/2009 (4:05:42pm)Tags: noneComments: (0)
Laurence A. Turka, MD, an international leader in the fields of transplantation immunology and transplantation research, will join the faculty of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, effective Nov. 1.
Turka comes to BIDMC from the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Medicine, where he is the C. Mahlon Kline Professor of Medicine and formerly Chief of the Department's Renal Division. A distinguished leader in the field of immune tolerance research, Turka serves as a Deputy Director of the Immune Tolerance Network, an NIH-funded consortium of researchers working together to establish new treatments for diseases of the immune system. As editor-in-chief of the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI), Turka is also a prominent voice in clinical and translational research.
To learn more, click here.
10/27/2009 (12:08:24pm)Tags: NIH transplant carbon monoxideComments: (0)
Leo Otterbein, PhD, a scientist in the Division of Transplantation at BIDMC whose novel research has revealed medical applications for carbon monoxide gas, has been awarded a $1.4 million, four-year EUREKA grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The award will enable Otterbein to continue to study the underlying biology behind this seemingly paradoxical idea and, if successful, could lead to new therapies for a range of medical applications from adjunct cancer treatments to fighting bacterial infections to helping kidney-transplant patients avoid organ rejection.
An acronym for Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration, EUREKA grants are part of an initiative unveiled last year by the NIH to fund innovative research and test new, unconventional ideas.
To learn more about Otterbein's work, click here.
5/26/2010 (10:43:29am)Tags: transplant geneticsComments: (0)
Researchers have identified a distinct pattern of gene expression in the largest reported group of kidney transplant recipients who have not rejected the transplant kidneys even though they stopped taking anti-rejection drugs.
This finding may help identify other transplant recipients who could safely reduce or end use of immunosuppressive therapy. In 2008, more than 80,000 people in the United States were living with a kidney transplant. The report appears online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The findings come from the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), an international research consortium supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, of the National Institutes of Health, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International. The research team included Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) investigator Laurence Turka, MD, together with Kenneth Newell, MD, PhD, of Emory University in Atlanta; and Vicki Seyfert-Margolis, PhD, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
To learn more, click here.
5/28/2010 (1:05:49pm)Tags: transplant immune cellComments: (0)
A group of "color-coded" laboratory mice are providing researchers with a novel way of tracking T-cells, enabling them to visualize and monitor the cellular immune responses of transplanted tissue in real time.
The new imaging system is described in the June issue of Nature Medicine, which appears on-line this week.
"These immune responses are a key consideration in developing strategies to improve transplant outcomes," says, co-senior author Terry Strom, MD, Co-director of the Transplant Institute at BIDMC.
To learn more, click here.
