Earlier last month, AST was recognized by Charity Navigator with a 4-star rating for the society's philanthropic efforts. Achieving this designation lets our supporters and others within the transplant community know that AST continues to strive to be a good steward of its financial resources.
Continue reading to learn more about how you can contribute to the good work of the AST from Dr. Richard Formica of Yale University, this month's guest author on the blog...
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It is with heavy hearts that we share the sad news of the recent passing of Dan Salomon. As president of the AST from 2013-2014, Dan's contributions to the Society were quite visionary. Below is a fitting tribute, written by Ken Newell.
The practice of medicine exposes us to the inevitability of death. Transplantation allows us to see the cycle of life with joy emerging from tragedy. However, nothing can prepare us for the loss of a dear friend and colleague. On November 10, 2016, Dan Salomon passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. Those who spent...
Read More......and are key to the continued success of AST and the field of solid organ transplantation
As we all know, in just under 30 days, American voters will determine the fate of all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, over half of the U.S. Senate, and who will serve as our 45th president in the White House. Unquestionably, there is much at stake in this historic election cycle; from determining the next inhabitants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to choosing who will and will not return to Capitol Hill in 2017, in addition to policy agendas and priorities for the next 115th...
Read More...As our membership becomes more and more diverse, it’s increasingly important that this blog cover a range of topics that interest a wide spectrum of those involved in transplantation. With this in mind, I’ve invited my colleagues Drs. Cetrulo and Ko to provide some insight on the first penis transplant in the United States and what this means for the future of VCA.
Curtis Cetrulo, Jr., MD, FACS, FAAP Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Surgery Dicken S. C. Ko, MD, FRCSC, FACS, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Urology
We...
Read More...Anil Chandraker, MD, FRCP, FAST, Brigham & Women's Hospital
Starting a new year as president of the American Society of Transplantation is a daunting task and quite rightly leads to a great deal of introspection. Having been a member of the society for many years before coming onto the board of directors, I recognize that it is not always easy to discern what the board does or why it does it.
My own belief is that the AST should always be about leadership in transplantation: that is why our organization exists, and that is why we choose to join it. Leadership is easy to...
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Reg Green, recipient of the 2016 AST Transplant Advocacy Award
I am the father of Nicholas Green, a seven-year old boy from California who was shot during an attempted carjacking while we were on vacation in Italy and whose organs my wife Maggie and I donated to seven Italians, four of them teenagers.
That was in 1994. Scarcely a day has gone by since then that I have not tried somehow to increase awareness of the donor shortage. Therefore, I was delighted to have been given the AST’s 2016 Transplant Advocacy Award. (Thank you to everyone involved and especially to...
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As I wind down my AST presidency, I have given much thought as to what to say at my presidential address. If you figure that there are 4,000 people at the ATC, and that I will have about twenty minutes to fill, the simple math is that I will be taking 80,000 minutes of your collective lives with my address. That’s equivalent to about 56 days of human life. For me, this is a source of anxiety. I've always tried to be respectful of others' time, and would feel terrible if, at the end of my address, everyone at the ATC said, "Well, there's twenty minutes of my life that I'll never get back...
Read More...I have invited my colleague Richard Fine to share a remembrance in honor of Bill Harmon's passing. An AST Past-President and respected member of the field, Bill will be missed by many.
Richard N. Fine, MD
On May 29, I lost a personal friend, and the field of transplantation lost a pioneer in pediatric transplantation.
Bill Harmon was a giant in the field of pediatric nephrology. After completing his training in pediatrics and pediatric nephrology in 1978, Bill joined the faculty Boston Children’s Hospital in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology led by Warren E....
Read More...I have invited the American Journal of Transplantation editor, Allan Kirk, to blog about some exciting changes at the AJT. Since its inception over 15 years ago, the AJT has been the leading journal covering both the science and practice of transplantation. We are very fortunate to have Allan at the helm of what is really one of the crown jewels of the AST’s education portfolio. As I’m sure most of you realize, the traditional model of print publication and deriving revenue from print advertising has been eroded by advances in electronic technology and the different ways in which readers...
Read More...The AST’s fourth Cutting Edge of Transplantation (CEOT) meeting included a separate Heart Track, co-sponsored by Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, to engender review and discussion of important issues being faced in the field of heart transplantation under the aegis of the "Resolving the Organ Shortage: Practice, Policy, Politics" theme of the conference.
Evan Kransdorf, MD, PhD; Jon Kobashigawa, MD
In the first session, "Increasing the Donor Heart Pool":
Tom Mone from the organ procurement agency (OPO) OneLegacy opened the session by offering strategies to ...
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