Transplant

Leader of medical tourism group says around a million people came to Türkiye in 2022 and spent approximately $2 billion on hair transplants. On average, hair transplant patients spend about $2,000 dollars for a procedure in Türkiye. (Reuters)…

Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has granted approval to a fecal transplant therapy designed to target a serious bacterial infection. The approval marks the first time any regulatory body in the world has formally authorized this kind of microbiome therapy.Although there is a massive amount of research currently investigating fecal transplants for the treatment of everything from alcoholism and obesity to skin cancer and autism, the idea of microbiome-modifying therapy is still incredibly nascent. The…

Akon has confirmed that he got a hair transplant, and it cost him $7,500.In an interview with Bootleg Kev, the singer admitted he went to Turkey for “a procedure” to restore his hairline. “In the beginning, my whole front was loose, it was real thin,” the 49-year-old told Kev, who asked if it was a painful procedure. “Nah, no. The painful part is the beginning when they gotta numb you up. That numbing ain’t no joke. They stick a needle like this big, non-stop.”Akon confirmed that they took a graft, and overall he appears…

We are arguably a long way off from transplanting miniature brain blobs into people (although some have tried putting them in rodents). But we are getting closer to implanting other organoids—potentially those that resemble lungs, livers, or intestines, for example. The latest progress has been made by Mírian Romitti at the Université libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and her colleagues, who have successfully created miniature, transplantable thyroids from stem cells. The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped structure in the…

One unexpected bonus was that the implant changed the shape of the cornea enough for its recipients to wear contact lenses for the best possible vision, even though they had been previously unable to tolerate them. The cornea helps focus light rays on the retina at the back of the eye and protects the eye from dirt and germs. When damaged by infection or injury, it can prevent light from reaching the retina, making it difficult to see. Corneal blindness is a big problem: around 12.7 million people are estimated to be…

The US network that matches donated kidneys, livers and hearts with desperate patients has serious issues and "needs to be vastly restructured," according to a government review seen by The Washington Post. It reportedly relies on out-of-date technology, has crashed for hours at a time and has never been audited by federal for security or other flaws by federal officials.   The current system has been administered by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) for 36 years. That non-profit is overseen by the Health…

The nonprofit that runs the organ transplant network in the United States has out-of-date technology and has never been fully audited by the federal government, according to a confidential report obtained by The Washington Post. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has two responsibilities: running the logistical system powering organ transplants and deciding how to prioritize organ distribution. The draft report, which was compiled by the White House’s US Digital Service in January 2021, recommended separating…

Medical researchers say a 66-year-old California man is the fourth person in history to be cured of HIV.According to the Washington Post, the man was diagnosed with the virus back in 1988, and has spent most of that time on antiretroviral therapy. Doctors say the man, who wished to remain anonymous, entered long-term remission from the virus in 2019, after he was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia.As part of his treatment, the patient underwent a rare stem cell transplant that replaced his cancerous blood with the…

Researchers at NYU Langone Health have announced successful results from a pair of experimental pig-to-human heart transplant procedures completed on recently deceased human subjects. The volunteers were kept on mechanical ventilation for three days while the organs were monitored in their bodies.This year is certainly turning into a significant landmark for the field of xenotransplantation. For decades, scientists have been working to solve the organ shortage crisis. One strategy has been to develop genetically modified…

In a first, surgeons have successfully attached a pig's kidney to a human and monitored the pinkish organ function normally for more than 50 hours. They hope this breakthrough could address donor organ shortages for life-saving transplants one day. While complex medical procedures similar to this have been done before on primates, it's the first time a pig kidney has been transplanted to a human body and not been immediately rejected. The surgeons tried the procedure in a brain-dead recipient, meaning the person was…