Find a Kidney Donor - using Facebook!

I'm not the world's greatest fan of Facebook, but it does have its uses. It's claimed to bring together old friends and classmates, but in the case of Tim Magsby, who had been on dialysis for four years, it did a bit more than that!

After four years worrying, with no close relatives suitable as a donor for a kidney, he turned in desperation to Facebook, and posted a video asking for help. Then an old school mate saw the video on a mutual friend's page and contacted Tim, even though they hadn't spoken to each other for 25 years. Tim was worried that it might be a joke, but Randy Riney, on thr left in the image, had the same blood type as Tim, on the right below, and the surgery was successful.

Original Story is here.

Taking Statin before Major Surgery can reduce your risk of kidney problems

Many patients who undergo major elective surgery can develop kidney problems after surgery, due to decreased blood flow to the kidneys during the operation, or due to inflammation.

In a research paper to be published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, researchers claim that taking a statin before surgery could protect the kidneys from being damaged. They examined the medical records of a large number of older patients in Ontario who underwent surgery between 1995 and 2008, and saw that those who were taking statins were 20% less likely to develop problems.

A total of 213,347 patients from 211 hospitals underwent major elective surgery, and 4,020 patients (1.9 per cent) developed postoperative kidney injury within two weeks of surgery. Of these, 1173 needed dialysis within 14 days of surgery, and a shocking 5,974 died with a month of their operations.

Home Dialysis May Ease Restless Legs Syndome

A recent report suggests that switching from treatment at a dialysis centre to treatment at home could be a solution to the lack of sleep problem encountered by some dialysis patients due to restless legs syndrome.

If you suffer from pins and needles or creepy-crawly feelings in your legs, then you may be suffering from restless leg syndrome; and if you are a dialysis patient, then you are about four times more likely to have this problem, and end up with sleepless nights. The patient is kept awake due to the legs twitching.

The continual sitting for prolonged periods during clinic based dialysis is one possible reason for dialysis patients suffering from this problem.

An investigation of patients who had home dialysis for a few hours each day showed improvements in restless leg syndrome and a lasting improvement in other sleep problems such as insomnia and daytime sleepiness.

Are Dialysis Patients X-rays a Risk?

A recent report from Italian researchers suggests that regularly x-raying dialysis patients to monitor their health is itself a health risk.

Marco Brambilla of Maggiore della Carità University Hospital in Novara, Italy said that the majority of routine x-rays to monitor a dialysis patients health gave no useful information. But the overall result for some patients was being exposed to the equivalent of 1000 chest scans a year! They followed 106 Italian dialysis patients' medical records over a three year period to come to this conclusion.

Many patients under went CAT scans (Computer Axial Tomography, to produce a 3-d image) and these can result in a dose of x-rays up to 100 times that of a standard x-ray. It was suggested that CAT scans are sometimes done without considering the cumulative risk or checking what other x-rays may have been given.

One of the problems is that increased exposure to x-rays is considered to be a cancer risk, and unless the process is properly recorded and monitored, the dose received over a long period of time can be quite high. The number of x-rays given while monitoring a patient's health varies from country to country, and some can be related to other health problems that a kidney failure patient may suffer. An earlier study (no reference available at present) suggested that about 2% of all cancers in the United States were caused by exposure to radiation during CAT scans.

One way to support your team!

This story has appeared in literally hundreds of places, and I thought I might as well mention it too.

Tom Walter is the baseball coach for Wake Forest.
Wake Forest signed new hopeful Kevin Jordan last year
- nothing unusual so far.

Two months after this Jordan developed a serious kidney problem, which resulted in him needing regular dialysis. Jordan learned last April that he had ANCA vasculitis, an autoimmune swelling disorder caused by abnormal antibodies, and wound up on dialysis. The antibodies can cause blood and protein to leak into the urine and could result in kidney failure. And unfortunately his relatives were not a good match for a transplant.

Now the interesting bit - his coach Walter turned out to be a match for a kidney transplant to the new signing. So the coach decided to donate a kidney, and the transplant was carried out on 8th February. Both are said to be recovering normally.

Now I've heard of fans having a tattoo with their team's star player's name on it or something similar (which can be a bit of a problem if they sign for some other team a year or two later), or wearing shirts with the star's name on it (less of a problem if they leave the team). But giving a kidney to a player is a bit exceptional. So exceptional that I found 466 news pages mentioning this act of generosity!

You have to admire the man for doing this, of that there is no doubt.

I wonder if the coach would ask for it back if Jordan one day signed for another team...