Blogs

TxAQM COP Member Spotlight - Ashley Cardenas!

By Raffaella Troiano posted 10-13-2022
Meet Ashley Cardenas! Affiliated Institution: UC San Diego Health Position: Transplant Regulatory Specialist What got you interested in transplantation? The week before I graduated from undergrad, I was feverishly putting in applications at every non-profit I could find with open positions when I received a call that a dear friend from high school died very suddenly from a massive aneurysm. Shortly after booking my flight home for his funeral, I received a call from Nevada Donor Network asking to schedule an interview which conveniently correlated to the dates I would be in town. At the funeral, my friend's mother told me that he was ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT MAY 2021 - Silke Niederhaus M.D.

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 05-07-2021
Name : Silke Niederhaus Twitter Handle : @NiederhausSilke Current Role/Position: Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Professional Development Why did you decide to choose a career in transplantation? I developed post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis at age 8, kidney failure at age 11, and decided to become a transplant surgeon the day of my first kidney transplant - 12/22/88. Then my stubborn self-kicked in, and here I am! Early Career Challenges : I developed renal failure again after 30 years of graft function only 2 years after taking my first attending job. Due to fatigue, daily morning ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT April 2021 - Adetokunbo Taiwo Odunaiya M.D.

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 04-16-2021
Name - Adetokunbo Taiwo Odunaiya @OdunaiyaTaiwo Current Role/Position Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine Program Director – Kidney Transplant Fellowship Stanford University Why did you decide to choose a career in transplantation? I went into medicine because I wanted to help people suffering from chronic health conditions get better. During my residency training, the sickest patients I cared for often had advanced kidney disease and dialysis did not sufficiently recover their quality of life. Transplantation is a field that dramatically changes lives, taking people from sick to well. Once I rotated through ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT March 2021 - Alixandra Cozette Killian, M.D., M.P.H.

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 03-08-2021
Name : Alixandra Cozette Killian, MD MPH Twitter Handle : @CozetteKale Current Role/Position: General Surgery Resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Jayme Locke’s laboratory Why a career in transplantation interests me: I’m drawn to transplant surgery primarily because of the opportunities to give patients a second chance at life. I’m excited by the challenging operations and hope to be a part of the multidisciplinary team that make comprehensive and longitudinal transplant care possible. I also love that transplantation is an innovative, relatively young and evolving field in which science ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT March 2021 - Alixandra Cozette Killian, M.D., M.P.H.

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 03-08-2021
Name : Alixandra Cozette Killian, MD MPH Twitter Handle : @CozetteKale Current Role/Position: General Surgery Resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Jayme Locke’s laboratory Why a career in transplantation interests me: I’m drawn to transplant surgery primarily because of the opportunities to give patients a second chance at life. I’m excited by the challenging operations and hope to be a part of the multidisciplinary team that make comprehensive and longitudinal transplant care possible. I also love that transplantation is an innovative, relatively young and evolving field in which science and ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT February 2021 - Velma P. Scantlebury M.D., F.A.C.S

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 02-01-2021
Member Spotlight Name : Velma P. Scantlebury M.D., F.A.C.S Twitter handle : @scantlv Current Role/Position : Professor of Surgery, Texas Christian University and Medical School and UNTHSC, Transplant Surgical Consultant Why did you decide to become a transplant surgeon ? I initially aspired to be a pediatric surgeon. My research was in transplantation and I went to University of Pittsburgh to do further research in transplantation to augment my candidacy. However, I became enthralled by pediatric transplantation and completed my multi-organ transplant fellowship there. Early Career challenges as a transplant surgeon? ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT January 2021 - Lyndsey Bowman

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 01-04-2021
Name: Lyndsey Bowman Twitter handle: @lyndseyanger Current Role/Position I am the pharmacotherapy specialist with the kidney and pancreas transplant team at Tampa General Hospital in Tampa, Florida. I also serve as the clinical coordinator for solid organ transplant pharmacists and Co-RPD for our PGY2 Solid Organ Transplant Residency Program. At one of the busiest kidney transplant centers in the country, most of my time is spent caring for inpatient kidney transplant recipients. What makes transplant pharmacy interesting/lucrative to you or what made you pick transplant pharmacy ? My high school chemistry teacher encouraged me to pursue pharmacy ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT December 2020 - Nicole Alvey

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 12-01-2020
Member Spotlight Name: Nicole Alvey Twitter handle: @Nsissy14 Current Role/Position: Associate Professor of Clinical Sciences, Roosevelt University College of Pharmacy Clinical Pharmacy Specialist, Solid Organ Transplant, Rush University Medical Center Projects/ Publication Links AST membership year: 2008 What makes transplant pharmacy interesting/lucrative to you or what made you pick transplant Pharm? My dad is a two-time kidney transplant recipient. During his first transplant, I was in college majoring in education. I had always had an interest in pharmacy as a career option, but retail pharmacy was all I knew, and I didn’t ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT November 2020 - Rosemary Persaud Cross PharmD, BCPS

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 11-02-2020
WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT Name: Rosemary Persaud Cross PharmD, BCPS Current Role: Transplant Clinical Pharmacist, Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia. Research Interest/Current Projects : Quality Assurance Performance Improvement (QAPI) projects on liver transplantation metrics AST membership year : 2008 Challenges as a Transplant Pharmacist? Being hired right out of general residency was a little challenging. My training was a lot of self-motivated reading, onsite teachings by physician colleagues, and reaching out to fellow ...

WHCOP MEMBER SPOTLIGHT September 2020 - Silvi Shah

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 09-01-2020
Name: Silvi Shah Current Role: Assistant Professor of Medicine, Transplant Nephrologist, University of Cincinnati Research Interest: Women’s health, Health disparities and cardiovascular disease in kidney transplant recipients Current Projects (2019-2020): Determining contraceptive use in women with kidney transplant AST membership year: 2015 Challenges as a young faculty: As a young faculty, it is a steep learning curve. I am thankful to have great mentors and sponsors both inside and outside the institution that have helped me navigate the challenges of a research career in academic medicine ...

WHCOP Member Spotlight August 2020 - Arpita Basu

By Itunu Owoyemi posted 08-03-2020
Name: Arpita Basu Current Role: Assistant Professor of Medicine, Transplant Nephrology-Emory Transplant Center Other Regional/National Roles: (a)Regional Representative (Region 3) - OPTN Kidney Transplant committee. (b) Committee Member- AST Public Policy Committee (c) Early Career Member at Large- AST Women’s Health Community of Practice Executive Committee Research Interest : Living Donation, geriatrics in transplant, transplant and transitional (teen-adult) phase Current Projects (2019-2020) : Establishing teen to adult transition ...

Calcified granulomas in potential living kdiney donor

By Lina Mackelaite posted 07-17-2019
​We have an otherwise healthy potential living kidney donor who has multiple calcified granulomas in the lungs and spleen (on CT). Histoplasma antigen negative, Aspergilus Galactomannon antigen positive. Would you be concerned about transmission with donation? Would you do any additional work up? Thank you!

infectious disease

By Deepa Nanayakkara posted 09-04-2018
Hi from UCLA, Wanted to ask if you have experience with dosing letermovir with renal failure/dialysis. Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you, Deepa Nanayakkara Fellow, Transplant Infectious Diseases

Biomarkers for Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy – Still an Elusive Goal

By Jon Kobashigawa posted 12-02-2016
Much progress has been made in the recent era to significantly decrease the incidence of cardiac allograft rejection. However, the incidence of cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) persists, affecting 50% of patients by 10 years post heart transplantation. CAV in these patients is a common cause of chronic graft dysfunction, often resulting in graft failure and death. As only a small number of patients with CAV are candidates for redo heart transplantation, addressing this complication continues to be a priority for the heart transplant community. Predicting the development of CAV, with a view to early intervention, remains a challenge due to diverse risk ...

Indication or follow-up biopsies after BK infection

By Evan Farkash posted 08-28-2015
OK – this is the first non-Parmjeet Blog entry in the Diagnostics COP, so I decided to touch on a topic close to his heart. One of the diagnostic challenges that I and my colleagues in our renal pathology group struggle with is biopsies from patients with recent or resolving BK polyomavirus nephropathy (PVN). Early in my career, I found polyomavirus nephropathy to be an easy diagnosis. Patients presented with graft dysfunction, and biopsies showed fulminant plasma cell rich inflammation, viral cytopathologic effect, and widespread unequivocal immunohistochemical staining for the large T antigen. I still see these cases occasionally, but practice patterns ...

Cutting Edge Consultation in Transplant Diagnostics

By Parmjeet Randhawa posted 08-07-2015
The last two COP business meetings at the ATC have featured difficult cases brought to us by COP members for a collective consultative opinion. These cases will be achived on the COP website. The first case has been posted in the Library section. It describes an interesting case of Denovo Minimal Change Disease occurring in a kidney transplant patient with recurrent Pseudomonas necrotizing fascitis. Enjoy!

Who is “too big” for a liver transplant?

By Erin Spengler posted 06-10-2015
Who is “too big” for a liver transplant? Nearly one-third of people living in the United States today are obese, and almost 7% are morbidly obese. Because of this increasing epidemic, more morbidly obese patients are undergoing liver transplant evaluation. Although organizations such as the AASLD have suggested restrictions on the transplantation of morbidly obese patients, there remains great variation in clinical practices among different institutions. This is in part due to conflicting literature about LT outcomes in morbidly obese patients. Perez Protto et al. reported equivalent long-term outcomes in morbidly obese and lean LT patients at their hospital ...