Kidney Transplants Total 104

              Kidney transplants total 104
By SALLY REESE
Times Medical Writer
Dr. John C. McDonald was flanked by
two of his patients Thursday at a press
conference, where it was revealed that
104 kidney transplants have been
performed at LSU Medical Center here
since 1977.
The chief of surgery and director of
the LSUMC transplant center presented
a Shreveport woman and a Bogalusa
man as the 86th and 101st persons,
respectively, to receive transplants
since the program was launched.
Laverne Holden, 57, of Bogalusa re-ceived
a second kidney there about a
month ago and is still a patient at LSU
Hospital. This was second transplant
Holden has received. The first was done
10 years ago.
Faye K. Evanoff, now a nurse in the
kidney transplant unit, was a patient
there last summer when McDonald
grafted a donor kidney to replace one
she lost in an auto mishap. A student
nurse at the time, she was a renal
dialysis patient of LSUMC's Dean Ike
Muslow pending the transplant.
McDonald said both received cadaver
grafts. In Holden's case, he added, the
cadaver graft was a closer match than
the one Holden's daughter was prepared
to give.
In the more than three years since
McDonald set up the program, people
throughout Louisiana and a few in
Arkansas and Texas have received
kidney transplants here. McDonald said
60 or more other Louisianians "are
waiting for us to get a kidney for them."
Shreveport and New Orleans have the
only certified transplant centers in the
state. Dr. Allen A. Copping, chancellor
of the LSU Medical System, said
Shreveport's center was made possible
by the merger of the state hospital with
the medical school.
"We took over the hospital as a
teaching hospital, and because of that,
we were able to recruit the expertise
for transplantation," he said at the
press conference.
McDonald said the center harvested
45 kidneys last year, but only half were
compatible for its own patients. Others
were sent elsewhere under an organ-sharing
program that involves LSUMC
with 17 universities and 40 transplant
centers. Similarly, the unit received
nine kidneys that were harvested by
other institutions, he said.
He estimated that 3,000 to 4,000
transplants will be done this year.
Too many variables preclude any
prediction of a kidney's survival, he
said.
"This points up the need for more
investigative effort — to make results
more predictable — and it is a reason
why a medical center should be in-volved
in research of transplanted pa-tients.
"Results have become enormously
better from the standpoint of patient
and kidney survival," he said. "But they
can become much better."
McDonald's own research reaches for
better typing methods, alternative
therapy to the side-effect drugs that
must be used to prevent organ rejection
and alternatives in organ transplants.
He and his team are looking at pan-creas
transplantation in the interest of
diabetics. They are using the pig as a
model in research looking to liver
transplants. They have the facilities for
developing surgical techniques for
heart transplants.
The McDonald team also is studying
methods of storing human skin, so when
LSUMC does get a new burn/trauma
center, appropriate methodology and
techniques will be ready.
Dr. Perry G. Rigby was at the press
conference also — less as associate
dean of the medical school than as
researcher in hematology. Rigby uses
McDonald's department for study
aimed at bone marrow transplant. He
uses the surgeon's labs for immunologic
workups on his patients.
All of this dramatizes the need for
more research funding, said Copping.
Muslow and Dr. Stephen Brown, head
of the renal dialysis unit, were present,
the former going from the press con-ference
to attend a patient.
Times
February 27, 1981