10 October - European Day for Organ Donation & Transplantation

Kidneys, liver, heart, lungs... while transplantation medicine is constantly developing, 70,000 people in the EU alone are still on waiting lists for a transplant, making the lack of organs the main obstacle to transplant medicine.  In 2014, 12 people every day died, 12 people died because of the lack of available organs.

The Council of Europe is working tirelessly to promote the ethical aspects, such as the respect of donors and receivers, and the non-commercialisation of human organs, tissues and cells.

The idea behind this Day, initiated by the Council of Europe, is to help a different member state each year to encourage debate and provide information on organ donation and transplantation, legal and medical measures so that each person can decide on donation and make their wishes known to their family.

It is about helping member states to promote organ donation and transplantation, and mobilise hospitals and professionals on the identification of potential donors. It is also an opportunity to honour all organ donors and their families and to thank transplantation professionals throughout Europe whose hard work helps saving lives and improving the quality of life of many people.

30th anniversary of the first successful single-lung transplant

Dear Respiratory friends we are congratulating everybody with wonderful anniversary of the first successful lung transplant!!!

Last year alone, 1,754 lung transplants were performed throughout the U.S., according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Yet not long ago, lung transplantation was regarded as one of thoracic surgery's great unsolved challenges. "It was thought that the bronchus might just be the Achilles' heel of transplantation, and it just was an insoluble problem," says Joel D. Cooper, MD, 74, from his office at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Monica Assenheimer (from left), the second single-lung recipient, Tom Hall, the world’s first single-lung recipient, and Ann Harrison, the world’s first double-lung recipient. The University of Toronto will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first successful lung transplant and honor Dr. Cooper at a ceremony Nov. 6.
Photo Courtesy of University of Toronto’s Living History project, livinghistory.med.utoronto.ca.

After participating in the 44th failed attempt in the late 1970s, Dr. Cooper retreated to his lab at University of Toronto. With the support of his colleagues and a number of research fellows from around the world, they conducted a series of wound-healing experiments in dogs that uncovered the culprit: high doses of the immunosuppressant drug prednisone interfered with the healing process. Using omentum and cyclosporin (both experimental at the time), Dr. Cooper and his team completed the first successful lung transplant in 1983 on a 58-year-old Canadian hardware executive and pulmonary fibrosis patient Tom Hall, and the procedure was reproducible.

"When everybody failed, Joel never gave up on making the dream of lung transplantation a reality," says Shaf Keshavjee, MD, surgeon in chief at (Toronto) University Heath Network and director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program, which Dr. Cooper initiated. "Thousands of lung patients are alive because of Joel's contributions."

November marks the 30th anniversary of the first successful single-lung transplant, but it's hardly Dr. Cooper's only contribution to thoracic surgery and medicine. Dr. Cooper, a professor of surgery at Penn and an ATS member since 1976, directed the first successful double-lung transplants in 1986 and 1987, and later the bilateral, sequential, single-lung transplantation procedure to treat cystic fibrosis, emphysema and pulmonary hypertension.

When asked how he felt about his legacy of solving a great thoracic mystery, Dr. Cooper humbly answers, "We put the icing on the cake that other people had spent years and years baking. I think it was Isaac Newton coined the aphorism, 'if we see further, it's because we stand on the shoulders of giants.' Nothing, I think, typifies that more than the transplant."

Facebook launched new tool for Organ Donors

More than 100 of years ago was performed first successful human transplantation. It was done by Doctor Eduard Zirm (1863-1944), a Viennese born and trained ophthalmologist, which performed bilateral corneal transplants in what was then Olmuetz, Austria-Hungary.

Despite the huge progress of medicine in 20-21 century, unfortunately the problem of organ donors remains unsolved. Mark Zuckerberg announced on morning TV that the facebook was allowing its 900 million users to begin registering online as organ donors. In 24 hours more than 100,000 people declare they were registered donors on Timeline.

“This is going to be an historic day in transplant,” said Dr. Cameron (the surgical director of liver transplantation at Johns Hopkins Hospital), adding that people who die for want of an organ do so mostly because there are not enough organ donors, not because of any shortcomings in medical technology. “The math will radically change, and we may well eliminate the problem.”