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...

Home dialysis viable following kidney transplant failure

Reported in DailyHealthReport, and many other sites.

Many patients who have a transplant end up returning to dialysis. The statistics show that there is very little survivability differences for such patients when using home dialysis compared to using hospital dialysis. There have been many studies on the survivability rate for the two treatments, and all report this same result. But, according to the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology, less than 20% of those returning to dialysis choose home dialysis. Home dialysis is a huge cost saver, and empowers the patients, freeing them from the tedium of continual visits to a clinic.

This latest research was carried out by doctors at St. Micheal's Hospital, University of Toronto.

Interestingly, while there is an increase in the number of patients receiving dialysis, the number on home dialysis is decreasing.

Donate your kidney and get out of jail

Reported by the BBC News and other news sites.

Two sisters jailed for an armed robbery that netted them a total of $11 / £7 have just been released on the condition that one donates a kidney to the other. Jamie Scott's daily dialysis costs the state roughly $200,000 / £129,000 per year.

They received a life sentence for an armed robbery in 1993 (but of course the news report only mentions the bare minimum of details to make it look an unjust sentence). The report mentions that protesters marched through the state capital last year, calling for their release and claiming that the sentences were harsh.

Prison officials are reported to have said that they no longer think the sisters, who are eligible for parole in 2014, are a threat to society. Obviously the saving in dialysis costs had no bearing on their release...

KDN - Greatest Hits 2010

One of the things that I personally don't like about basic blogging software is the way good articles can slip down out of sight, forcing the visitor to search through month by month to see what else has been covered on a blog. While reading a techy advice blog, I found they suggested an idea that I'd been considering myself - a greatest hits list. This would be a summary of earlier articles that had proved popular over the last year, giving visitors an easy way to catch up on what they'd missed.

So here are our most viewed articles, with normalised viewing figures instead of the actual views - that means I've given the most viewed one 100%, and compared the others with that article's views. It was going to be a Top Five list, but three articles were very close in the number of views, to I made it a Top Seven instead.

Portable dialysis machine Dec 2009 - 100%
This topic in general seems to have quite a few web pages devoted to different designs, but this particular design seemed to crop up quite often in Google.

Implantable Artificial Kidney - coming soon Sept 2010 - 84%
Although this is a recent article, it has grabbed second place due to the huge amount of interest such a device has created and how useful it would be. Let's hope its future is as bright as its developers hope.

Vitamin E helps fight muscle cramps during dialysis Nov 2009 - 78%
With around 20% of patients suffering from cramp during dialysis, this article attracted a fair bit of attention.

Fresenius gets another warning Oct 2010 - 66%
Their claimed failure to deal properly with problem items already out in the field generated some bad publicity for this well-known supplier.

Drug hope for Polycystic Kidney Disease Sufferers Sept 2010 - 57%
I suppose any good news about a new drug showing hope automatically attracts attention.

Location, location, location July 2010 - 56%
This article showed that where you lived had a big effect on how well you were treated. There were two such articles in short succession (one about the US and the other about the UK), and the link shows both of them.

Baxter Recalls Peritoneal Dialysis Solutions Dec 2010 - 55%
Another big supplier has problems with its products. For such a recent article to feature in the top seven shows that patients are trying to keep up to date on these product recall stories.

So if you've missed them, give these articles a read.

Baxter Recalls Peritoneal Dialysis Solutions

This only applies to European supplies, according to an update.

A Reuters article reported the following news, on 17 December 2010.

Baxter has recalled the following products, due to the potential presence of endotoxins - Dianeal, Extraneal and Nutrineal. According to a spokesperson of the European Medicines Agency "Although the number of batches affected is likely to be low, the agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has concluded that current stocks should be replaced, because it is not possible to identify which bags are affected."

There is a risk that patients who receive solutions containing endotoxins may develop aseptic peritonitis. The toxins are thought to have been caused by bateria settling on microscopic cracks in two tanks used in the production of these solutions, at their Irish factory in Castlebar.