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!
April is National Donate Life Month (NDLM) and was instituted by Donate Life America and its members in 2003, and grew out of the federally proclaimed National Organ, Eye and Tissue Donation Awareness Week (NOTDAW). NDLM features an entire month of local, regional and national activities to help encourage Americans to become donors.
Additionally, this year there is a national initiative, Flags Across America, in which hospitals and other organizations will raise Donate Life flags to honor and celebrate organ, tissue and eye donors and recipients. Already media coverage is popping up on the campaign, like this story about Erlanger hospital in Tennessee and this story about Seymour hospital in Connecticut.
Encourage participation from hospitals and organizations in your communities to help spread awareness for donation during the month of April! Visit Donate Life for more information on the campaign.
In a story published by The Cypress Times today, LifeGift reminds everyone that the need for organ and tissue donors is still critical.
According to LifeGift, an organ and tissue recovery agency in Texas, there are 110,000 people in the United States waiting for a lifesaving transplant. On average,18 people die of organ failure due to the lack of available organs for transplant and approximately 138 people are added to the nation’s organ transplant waiting list daily. There are nearly 11,000 people in Texas alone waiting for lifesaving transplants.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles and Donate Life California announced yesterday that more than eight million Californians have now registered as organ and tissue donors through the state’s Donate Life California Organ & Tissue Donor Registry,a 33 percent increase in 12 months. The orgainzations attribute the surge in registrations to continuing education about donation and the convenience for Californians to sign up as donors at the same time that they apply for or renew driver licenses or I.D. cards at the DMV.
Congratulations Californians on making the brave choice to donate and helping to increase possibilities for patients in need of organ and tissue tranplants! Tissue transplants can have the same life-saving and life-enhancing benefits as organ transplant.
We are now in our second year of operating this educational site AllograftPossibilities. We started this site with the lofty goal of becoming the premier source for straightforward tissue donation and transplant information, and through feedback from our readers we have evolved the site to focus on the humanization of that topic, as well as the organizations, donor families and tissue recipients touched by it.
To expand our reach, we are evolving our social media activity to provide an even more robust online presence for tissue donation. That is why this month AllograftPossibilities was redesigned to make it more user friendly and better suited to our numerous audiences. Also, we launched a Facebookpage to support the blog, and we are also proactively commenting in the blogosphere and in online media outlets on relevant stories about donation and transplantation.
We invite you to take a look through our new site and Facebook page, participate in the discussions and share any of your own news or content regarding tissue donation that you would like us to promote on either site.
We are excited to unveil the new and improved AllograftPossibilities, the premier Web source on tissue donation and transplantation.
We overhauled the site to make it more user-friendly and better tailored for our numerous audiences including: donor families, tissue recipients, OPO personnel, students/young people that attend educational programs on donation and AlloSource personnel. The blog is also a resource for those with questions about tissue donation and transplantation, with a new “Ask a Question” feature at the left.
We are aiming to make AllograftPossibilities an all-inclusive aggregate of tissue donation and transplantation information, as well as recipient and donor stories from around the country, so if you have a story to share or event to promote please let us know by clicking “Share Your Story” to the left.
We were thrilled that myriad local media took an interest in the story of Colorado Rose Parade float rider and tissue recipient Parker Simpson. It was a great way to kick off the New Year: with a reminder of the amazing possibilities of tissue donation.
Follow the links below to check out some of the coverage of this AlloSource-sponsored float rider:
Additionally, another Rocky Mountain participant, Patricia Thomas (sponsored by Donor Alliance) also received great media coverage of her participation. Patricia rode aboard the Donate Life float in memory of her daughter Kathleen, who was a tissue donor.
Please check out this touching story from the Denver FOX affiliate about 19-year-old tissue recipient and cancer survivor Parker Simpson, who just returned from participating in the Donate Life Float in the 2011 Tournament of Roses Parade.
Parker reflects on what it means to be a recipient of donated tissue:
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 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.
National Donate Life Month is the perfect time to stop and think about the gift of organ and tissue donation and peruse the real-life stories of the people it touches every day.
One man in St. Rockford, Illinois recently showed the boundless limits of human generosity by giving the ultimate gift of life: he decided to donate one of his kidneys to a cashier he hardly knew. Read their heartwarming story here.
Reminder: April is National Donate Life Month. It is a great time to reflect on the miracles made possible here at AlloSource thanks to generous donors and their courageous families. Because of their decisions to register as donors, each day we are able to save and enhance the lives of patients in need: providing allograft skin to patients who are severely burned, generating fresh articular cartilage allografts to promote joint restoration for patients who have suffered disease or trauma, processing live cellular bone growth substitutes for patients with broken bones or spinal fusions, and so much more.
Although still lesser understood than organ transplantation, approximately 1.5 million tissue transplants are performed each year. Celebrate this Donate Life Month by reading some of our touching stories of donor families and tissue recipients. Their chronicles truly bring to life the miraculous possibilities of tissue donation.
And please remember, if you’re not already a donor, register to become one. And pass the word on to your friends and families.
China is quickly becoming a powerhouse in the field of regenerative medicine; however, despite the country’s obvious commitment to the cause and rapid successes in the field, they are also being questioned by worldwide authorities on regenerative medicine for their willingness to use unverified stem cell techniques in Chinese clinics and hospitals. Though they are continuing to make great strides, the lack of governmental regulation places a burden on the burgeoning research.
A recent article on ScienceProgress.org details the intricate struggle.
What do you think about the Chinese approach to regenerative medicine? What, if any, are the implications for the US?
Check out a few photos from the stunning float, featuring AlloSource’s float rider Manuel Salazar, a courageous quadruple amputee and tissue recipient.
For a third consecutive year, Donate Life was among the Rose Parade float award winners. This year’s “New Life Rises” entry won the prestigious Theme Trophy for Excellence in Presenting the Parade Theme, “A Cut Above The Rest.”
Additionally, ABC conducted a text-message poll allowing their millions of viewers to select their favorite float. The winner: Donate Life!
Julie Prangl has experienced the heartbreak, loss, hope and awe that come from being on both sides of organ and tissue donation. Her 17-year-old son became an organ and tissue donor after losing his life in a car accident. Shortly thereafter, Julie’s daughter became the recipient of an ankle transplant that relieved her from a lifelong debilitating condition.
“It’s ironic,” Julie said. “All of the sudden you’re looking at something from the exact opposite side. The fact that these things are possible on both ends … it really is a miracle.”
Julie Prangl and her children, Christmas 2006. Son Nick died 6 weeks later in a car accident and became an organ and tissue donor. Daughter Lindsey later received an ankle transplant. (Photo courtesy Julie Prangl)
Discover the variety of clinical applications for bone and tissue allografts, including orthopaedic, spine, sports medicine, oral maxillofacial, podiatry, periodontal, urology, oncology and trauma.
Or, learn more about skin allografts used for the treatment of burns, including function, structure, donor recovery and clinical application.
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