Following 9/11, Zach felt like many other Americans, “I was tired of watching everything that was happening on TV and thought there had to be a way I could do more to help.” This inspired him to take his EMT experience and passion for medicine and become a combat medic in the army.
After all the necessary training, Zach was sent overseas to the Korengal Valley, in the Kunar Province in Afghanistan. Bordering Pakistan and China, in 2007 the Kunar Province was a mix of terrorist cells, including Al-Qaida, all vying for control. This made it site of some of the heaviest fighting in the Afghan War. Twelve months into his deployment and only a few weeks from his return home, Zach was on patrol when his platoon came under fire from enemy insurgents.
During the attack, one of Zach’s friends had his leg blown off by a rocket propelled grenade and Zach crawled out into an unprotected area, while being fired upon, to bring his friend to safety. While pulling the wounded soldier back behind cover, unbeknownst to him, Zach was shot. He called for a military evacuation helicopter, while stopping the bleeding with a tourniquet and starting an IV on his wounded comrade. Another soldier pointed out blood on Zach’s pant leg and asked him if it was his. Zach said, “I didn’t feel anything until then. But as soon as I saw it, I felt the pain and it was excruciating.” He called the medical evacuation helicopter again and told them to bring a replacement medic. About ten minutes later, the helicopter arrived and both he and his friend were taken for further medical treatment. (more…)
Susan Cossabone always had a gift with horses and a passion for riding. To fulfill that passion, she owned a 10-acre ranch, Hidden View Farm, with 26 horses. Not only did she ride for hours a day, Susan also rode competitively, helped retrain difficult horses, and set up an equine summer camp for at-risk and mentally and physically disabled children. Her passion kept her motivated as she managed most of the ranch alone.
This all changed on a snowy day in 2009. Driving home from dropping off a friend, a car slid out of its lane and struck Susan’s vehicle head on. Witnesses called 911. Due to winter weather the emergency response was slow and Susan’s injuries were grave: on her right leg her kneecap was ripped off, both her tibia and fibula were fractured and her foot was dislocated.
Once at the hospital, Susan’s leg was saved with surgically implanted titanium rods. “I hoped I would be able to walk again,” she said.
Despite this hope, Susan was told that she could never ride again. As a result of her injury, she had to greatly reduce the number of horses she owned, from 26 to 10. Her summer camp was unable to continue, but the remaining horses were taken care thanks to generous help from previous campers.
In a heartbreaking development, her injury then became worse; the metal rods in her leg broke and the doctors began to talk about amputation. Susan refused to accept that option, but nearly every doctor she saw told her the same thing. She could not walk at all by this point, and spent all of her time in a wheelchair.
Desperate to avoid amputation, she found Dr. Mark Myerson through an internet search. Describing her initial conversation with Dr. Myerson, Susan said, “He was the only doctor who did not talk only about amputation. He promised me nothing except his help.” Susan did not have the option of a traditional ankle replacement because when the rods in her leg broke, the screws had become embedded in her ankle, causing even more damage. (more…)
Concerning a “new type of stem cell therapy where live cells, harvested from a tissue donor, are added to an allograph, which then would act like or mimic how the patient’s bone would act.” Incredible to watch how modern medicine continues to find new uses for donated tissue!
When Devin Katacinski was just 12 years old he sustained second-degree burns after spilling a cup of scalding coffee on his arm. The coffee immediately took the skin off from the bottom of his thumb to the middle of his forearm.
Here Devin discusses his injury, and recovery, which was thanks in part to a skin transplant processed by tissue bank AlloSource. Devin reflects on how he feels to have received this gift of life from a donor.
Rachel Frank was a typical college athlete: focused, intense, and determined. When a knee injury threatened her ability to complete her final soccer season, she simply played through the pain.
It wasn’t long before Rachel discovered she could no longer “grin and bear” her meniscus injury. She had to have the injured tissue replaced with an allograft – sidelining her for months from any physical activity.
“It was a difficult decision,” recalls Rachel. “But movement is everything to me. I knew I had to have the procedure.”
Today, Rachel is back in competition. In fact, she completed the Hawaii Ironman 70.3 Triathlon in May 2009, something she only dreamed of prior to her allograft meniscus replacement. Inspired by her experience, Rachel chose orthopedics as her field of specialty in medical school and currently is an MD candidate at Rush University Medical Center.
A chat with Dr. Richard Kagan about his use of allograft tissue as a burn surgeon, and what tissue donation means to him
Dr. Kagan is the Chief of Staff at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Cincinnati and Professor of Surgery at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Q: Describe why allograft skin is crucial to save and heal burn victims.
A: It provides a temporary wound cover until the wound is ready to accept the patient’s own skin or until the patient’s limited donor sites are available for autografting.
Q: Why do you use allograft skin for the treatment of burns, versus synthetic materials?
A: I use a combination of both, but 90% of the time fresh allograft is my preference because it will vascularize and adhere to the wound bed better. Allograft tissue creates a temporary wound cover that permits the patient’s condition to improve without the need to create an additional wound from the harvesting of autologous skin. My use is predominantly in deep and/or extensive burns in which case the allograft tissue is potentially lifesaving, but I also use it in the treatment of small burns, abrasion injuries and infected wounds because of its reliable effectiveness.
Q: What do you look forward to in terms of new innovations and new possibilities for tissue transplantation in the future?
A: I’d like to see day when the viability of allograft skin is actually measurable and repeatable so when a surgeon wants fresh or viable skin there’s a measure that implies or guarantees a standard. I’d also like to see more techniques developed to store and maintain the viability of allogeneic tissue, so we don’t have to hope the timing of a donation and a clinical need coincide. (more…)
“As a registered nurse, I have solicited and educated families about organ and tissue donation,” said Margie Mayfield. “However, as a mom receiving this precious gift, it is truly beyond anything I can imagine.”
In 2010, Margie tore her ACL while playing with a child in an inflatable jumping house that she was sponsoring at a church event. Immediately after the injury she was unable to straighten her leg or bear weight on it. Following an MRI that confirmed the tear, Margie decided right away that she would pursue an allograft tissue transplant to repair her knee, if possible.
“I love to bike, play tennis, power walk and swim,” said Margie. “With the injury I was limited. I had a neighbor living with the same injury and I didn’t want to do the same thing.”
However, the gift of tissue donation was not something that Margie took lightly or for granted.
“I was educated in what it means to have donated organs or tissue available, and I trust the system,” said Margie, who works as a parish nurse. “It’s also a faith journey. I want to live my life fully and this offered me fullness and I didn’t want to pass that up.” (more…)
Devin was a typical 12-year-old: an active boy who loved to play soccer and spend time with his friends. Unfortunately, an accident put Devin’s life on pause.
On a Sunday morning at church, Devin was pouring a cup of coffee when the cup slipped and he spilled the coffee on his arm. “When it spilled on my arm, my long-sleeve shirt started clinging to my skin, and my skin was bubbling on my hand,” said Devin. The hot coffee immediately took the skin off from the bottom of his thumb, to the middle of his forearm.
Devin was rushed to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with second degree burns. “They wrapped up my arm, put chemical water on it to cool it and dumped it in a tub, which made it very numb. They also gave me pain killers that put me asleep for a few hours,” explained Devin.
Following treatment at the emergency room, Devin was referred to the Joseph M Still Burn Center at WellStar Cobb Hospital in Austell, Georgia where he remembers noticing that everyone’s burns were so much more severe than his own. Within hours, he was taken into surgery where the doctors removed the burned skin and placed allograft skin on top of it. Allograft skin is a gift of life from a deceased human donor. The days following consisted of a lot of sleep and saltine crackers, but it was the donor skin that really helped in the healing process. The proteins in the donor skin were ideal to help to heal the burn and encourage Devin’s body to regenerate new skin. (more…)
As medicine continues to advance, so too do possibilities for tissue donation and transplant. One of the latest medical treatments available use stem cells from tissue donors.
Check out this exciting story out of Baltimore with Dr. Mark Myerson, director of Mercy Medical Center’s Institute for Foot and Ankle Reconstruction. Dr. Myerson used AlloStem Stem Cell Bone Growth Substitute to re-grow bone in the ankle of a woman from New Jersey who was originally told her leg would have to be amputated following a devastating car accident.
In this Vail Daily article an orthopedic surgeon discusses torn ACLs – a common sports injury, especially among skiers. He discusses the biology of knees, how a torn ACL can be treated (including with an allograft transplant from a deceased donor), as well as the rehabilitation. A good read – especially for our friends here in Colorado!
Tom Cycyota, the CEO of nonprofit tissue bank AlloSource, and tissue recipient Sarah Tomicich, who also works at AlloSource, were interviewed for this important story during Donate Life Month. This is a great reminder that tissue donation can have the same life-saving and life-enhancing benefits of organ donation.
We are honored to share this video blog from donor parents Pat and Jay Landers of Springfield, IL. Here Pat and Jay remember their son, Ryan, who was killed in a car accident and became an organ and tissue donor. So far, Ryan’s gifts have impacted 61 recipients in at least 12 states and Korea through 2 organ, 54 tissue and 5 vascular transplants.
Pat and Jay share in their own words what it has meant to them to be a donor family.
We were so pleased to meet this brave donor family via the Gift of Hope organ procurement organization.
OrthoSuperSite reported this week on promising 7-year follow up results for patients who have received a meniscal allograft transplant – the transplant of a meniscus and cartilage from a deceased donor. This procedure is for treatment of patients who have suffered a torn meniscus, suffer from knee pain and do or may suffer from arthritis.
According to the story: “Brian J. Cole, MD, MBA, presented his group’s findings at the 2011 Annual Meeting of the Arthroscopy Association of America … Cole reported that the procedure could reduce pain, increase range of motion and improve joint function in the long term.”
This article from the McCook Daily Gazette includes an important statistic:
98 percent of all adults have heard about organ donation and 86 percent have heard of tissue donation
While the number of adults who have heard of tissue donation is definitely climbing, it still lags behind awareness of organ donation. The uses for donated tissue are a bit more complicated than they are for organs, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that they have the same life-saving and enhancing benefits.
This tissue, referred to as allograft tissue, is donated by registered donors and their families, in the same way organs are donated, and it is used in many medical procedures already, with numerous new opportunities on the horizon.
Donated human tissue is used in many surgical applications, saving peoples’ lives and limbs daily. Allograft tissue is used to replace damaged structures in the body, from the ligaments and tendons of major league sports players, bones and joints of military men and women, to the musculoskeletal structures, teeth, skin, and spinal components of average citizens.
Here at AllograftPossibilities we strive to increase awarness of tissue donation and transplant. Have a question? We’d be happy to answer it!
AlloSource’s H.C. Martensen forges a deeper connection
to his work
Tissue bank employee and transplant recipient H.C. Martensen in the 2008 Vineman Iron Distance Triathlon in California. Now, five months after his ligament transplant, H.C. is recovering well and planning to participate in a triathlon in June.
H.C. Martensen works in the AlloSource tissue processing core where he is faced with the powerful realities and possibilities of tissue donation and transplantation every day. He also has the utmost confidence in the allografts that he and his tissue bank colleagues produce, so much so that he recently requested one for his own transplant.
Over the summer H.C. returned to his former university, Colorado College in Colorado Springs, for an alumni soccer game. He played on the team in college, and since then remained very athletic, participating in triathlons and skiing. However, at the time of the game, it had been a while since he’d played soccer. Following a cutting motion on the field he felt his leg let go below the knee. H.C. instantly knew what had occurred, not only because of his work, but also because a close friend had sustained a torn ACL just three days prior.
Shortly thereafter a surgeon confirmed it – H.C.’s ACL and lateral meniscus were torn and he needed surgery and an allograft transplant. Although the surgeon did not historically use allografts from AlloSource, H.C. made a special request to have his graft come from the tissue bank. (more…)
Account from the North American Spine Society meeting
AlloSource recently showcased AlloStem Bone Graft Substitute at this year’s NASS meeting in Orlando. Dr. Eubulus Kerr, a spinal surgeon from Shreveport Louisiana, presented a review of his clinical usage of AlloStem tissue in spine fusion procedures. Dr. Kerr presented follow-up from cervical and lumbar fusion cases with up to six months of follow up and very encouraging early results. Many of the attending surgeons stayed after the presentation had formally ended to discuss the AlloStem technology with attendees and AlloSource staff. One surgeon who attended the seminar has already completed his first surgery with the AlloStem tissue, implanting the tissue for spinal fusion.
The conference validated that live cellular products are the direction the industry is heading, so stay tuned.
This week we were pleased to chat with Dr. Francis, a podiatric surgeon from Tulsa, about his use of allograft tissue and his hopes for tissue transplant in the future.
I am proud to announce that this month AlloSource was named Colorado’s top healthcare company as judged by the local business magazine ColoradoBiz. That said I know that this honor is not ours alone, but rather speaks to the overall impact of tissue donation and transplantation.
We share this distinction with a handful of important partners:
The donors and donor families who make the powerful decision to give the gift of life, and make everything that we do possible. We continue to make it a top priority to honor their gifts with integrity and humanity, and share the important stories of the tissue recipients whose lives they save or enhance.
Our organ procurement organization partners who work diligently to promote the cause of tissue donation. Thanks to their efforts, donor consent for tissue donation has increased by nearly 30 percent among this group – a staggering result!
All the medical professionals who bring the gift of life full circle by treating patients with our allografts, delivering amazing results. We are proud to continue our work with a number of surgeons around the country to advance the possibilities of tissue transplantation with the testing of new allografts.
Thank you for your contributions to the miraculous process of tissue donation and transplantation.
Novel approaches in wound healing seek to supply to the wound with biologic factors that are thought to be absent in the chronic wound. This support for regenerative wound repair is being reinforced by sizeable grants for such research, like the pair of recent U.S. Army grants totaling $760,000 awarded to Lakshmi Nair at the University of Connecticut to study the regenerative repair of musculoskeletal tissue, like skin, cartilage and bone.
In improper wound healing, cells can show either an exaggerated or inadequate response to molecular healing signals, leading to problematic wound site inflammation or stalled wound healing. Dr. Nair’s approach seeks to ‘modulate’ the local wound site with regenerative biomaterials, specifically, a polysaccharide compound that adapts to the irregular geometries characteristic of tissue defects, while acting as carriers for known wound-healing cells and protein growth factors. Also in the works is a protein-based injectable biomaterial that seeks to regenerate compromised bone and cartilage. Using organic molecules like these, Dr. Nair hopes to deliver cost-effective, biologically active treatments that will rescue improper wound healing and stimulate the replacement of lost bone and cartilage.
- Jessica Duncan, AlloSource Product Manager – Burn and Wound Care
We are so pleased to see media coverage of tissue transplantation, because it can have life-saving and life-enhancing benefits just like organ transplantation. However, tissue donation is still lesser understood.
Kudos to the Lubbock FOX network for shedding light on this issue, noting “a tissue donor has the ability to help a burn victim or give a star athlete a chance to return to their sport after a major injury like tearing of an ACL. Across the nation there is a massive demand for skin as well as sports-related orthopedic tissue.”
We are thrilled to see that students across the country are joining the cause of organ and tissue donation and donor registration through the Students for Organ Donation organization. Here in Colorado two universities (University of Colorado and Colorade State University) have made the quest to register donors a friendly competition – what a great activity! Check out CU’s Students for Organ Donation website here.
We are pleased to introduce our 2011 Tournament of Roses Donate Life
float rider
In 2006 Parker Simpson was an active teenager, ambitious academically and involved in a number of sports including football, lacrosse and wrestling. It was that year, as a high school sophomore, that a sports injury to his ankle soon landed him on the doctor’s table. Parker discovered that he had developed osteomyelitis, a staph infection of the bone, in his tibia and fibula. But he couldn’t have foreseen that this was the beginning of a trying medical journey that would test the resolve of both him and his family for years to come.
Parker was faced with possible amputation of his leg several times as a result of the infection. A successive back injury was further complicated due to the existing illness in his bones. He underwent numerous operations to combat the ankle and back afflictions, resulting in a fused ankle and foot, and yet his young body was just beginning its battle to survive. (more…)
I found this article very interesting and intriguing as it relates to the repair of articular cartilage utilizing amnion tissue, the membrane that encases the placenta. As the article conveys, it is a versatile tissue that has the potential to serve as a solution to the challenges of healing wounds and other soft tissue ailments. What is also great is that it makes use of the placenta following c-section births, when it would otherwise be discarded. Most recently, several companies have begun manufacturing and distributing amnion to assist surgeons with procedures involving neurology, spine and orthopedics. I look forward to providing the medical community with new ways to use amnion. Check out the article I read to learn more about how amnion tissue could be used in the future.
- Tom Carter, Product Manager
The theme of this year’s 27th annual meeting of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) was Focus on the Future.
The Tissue Council Meeting headed up the agenda on day one. The Tissue Council membership is made up of representatives from many different OPOs and tissue banks across the country. The highlight of the council meeting was a panel discussion held between attendees and senior representatives from the major tissue processors in the US. The panelists discussed the changing landscape of tissue banking and what they foresee the course of tissue transplantation will be in the future, including cells/live cell grafts as the future of tissue donation.
Frank Bodino, President of Transplant Speakers International, called attention to the importance of tissue donation this week in the company’s newsletter. The newsletter also features the moving story of Manuel Salazar, a quadruple amputee who received life-saving allografts from AlloSource.
To read more about tissue donation and Manuel’s story, check out the newsletter here.
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