{"id":23641,"date":"2014-08-26T23:14:12","date_gmt":"2014-08-26T15:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=23641"},"modified":"2014-08-26T23:14:12","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T15:14:12","slug":"alberta-surgeons-had-busy-10-days-in-july-transplanting-32-various-organs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/08\/26\/alberta-surgeons-had-busy-10-days-in-july-transplanting-32-various-organs\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta surgeons had busy 10 days in July transplanting 32 various organs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ShuterStock image<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

EDMONTON — A surgical transplant team in Edmonton has completed more transplants in a 10-day period than it normally does in one month.<\/p>\n

In July, the Mazankowski and U of A transplant services team completed 32 transplants, which included lungs, hearts, livers, islets, kidneys and a pancreas.<\/p>\n

It broke Alberta’s previous transplant record, which was 30 transplants in 10 days.<\/p>\n

Physicians, nurses and surgeons had to work quickly to match organs to patients and schedule operating rooms and beds.<\/p>\n

The organs involved in the record-setting series of transplants came from 11 deceased donors, including eight Albertans.<\/p>\n

Transplant recipient Rick Galloway says people don’t realize how important donating organs is until it happens to them.<\/p>\n

“A thank you is all you can say,” added Galloway, “and ‘sorry for your loss.’ It’s tough to put into words.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Jim Kutsogiannis is medical director of the HOPE Program, which co-ordinates organ and tissue donations in Alberta.<\/p>\n

“Many people that are involved in the care of these patients — the nurses, the OR staff, the physicians — go above and beyond in providing their time and effort to accommodate this,” he said.<\/p>\n

Medical staff must care for transplant recipients, but donors also need care to ensure organs remain in good condition prior to transplant, Kutsogiannis said.<\/p>\n

“Often, they’re very unstable,” said Kutsogiannis. “They require many caregivers to maintain their organs’ functioning for the purpose of donation.”<\/p>\n

He said Albertans are becoming increasingly aware of organ donation and that patients’ families are approaching hospital staff more and more about the possibility of donating.<\/p>\n

Since the province launched its organ and tissue donation registry in April, 23,000 Albertans have signed up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON — A surgical transplant team in Edmonton has completed more transplants in a 10-day period than it normally does …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-health","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}