{"id":97978,"date":"2009-12-22T07:16:15","date_gmt":"2009-12-22T12:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/health\/2009\/12\/22\/feds-look-to-lower-risk-of-infection-from-donated-organs\/"},"modified":"2009-12-22T07:16:15","modified_gmt":"2009-12-22T12:16:15","slug":"feds-look-to-lower-risk-of-infection-from-donated-organs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/97978","title":{"rendered":"Feds Look to Lower Risk of Infection from Donated Organs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Kidney\"With growing concern about the risk of disease transmission through donated organs and tissues, federal health experts have delivered up a sobering picture of wide gaps in patient safety, as I write in my Informed Patient column<\/a> today. <\/p>\n

Their 100-page report, \u0093Biovigilance in the United States: Efforts to Bridge a Critical Gap in Patient Safety and Donor Health, \u0094 ordered up by the federal Dept. of Health and Human Services\u0092 advisory committee on blood safety and availability, was quietly made public last month on the group’s Web site<\/a>. The findings were hashed over at a recent two-day meeting where transplant experts and federal safety experts went over the challenges the U.S. faces in coordinating the patchwork of regulations and voluntary programs that govern blood, organ and tissue transplants. Transcripts of that meeting also were posted<\/a> late last week.<\/p>\n

With most of the focus in Washington on health care reform these days, it hasn\u0092t been easy to get attention for patient safety issues \u0096 but for anyone concerned about safety risks, particularly in organ transplants, both the report and the transcripts are worth plowing through. The report recommends the creation of a national biovigilance network to centralize blood, organ and tissue safety monitoring, including a system to detect infections in donors, track their organs and tissues, and prevent the transmission of additional infections. <\/p>\n

At the meeting, where medical experts discussed balancing the availability of organs with the need to screen out diseased organs and tissues and inform patients of risks, the committee also heard pleas for better screening and testing procedures from the wives of two men who died after receiving a transplants. <\/p>\n

Shirin Platt’s husband Peter contracted a parasite through a donated kidney; Pam Alesescu’s husband Ken contracted a fungal infection that may have been transmitted by a donated aortic valve, and later died. Alesescu told the committee she realizes it is \u0093probably next to impossible to treat and evaluate human-derived resources for every type of fungal, bacterial, or viral contamination and that doing so can become cumbersome and costly.\u0094 But, she added, \u0093We owe it to donors’ families and to the patients who receive these precious gifts\u0094 to make sure that patient safety \u0093is always in the forefront.\u0094<\/p>\n

<\/img><\/a>
\n<\/img><\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With growing concern about the risk of disease transmission through donated organs and tissues, federal health experts have delivered up a sobering picture of wide gaps in patient safety, as I write in my Informed Patient column today. Their 100-page report, \u0093Biovigilance in the United States: Efforts to Bridge a Critical Gap in Patient Safety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}