“The combination of focusing on both the art and science of working with grieving families, various hospitals, OPO and tissue organizations, truly made this an exceptional conference. MTF provided something tangible for each constituent to take home and put into practice.  Thanks for inspiring me to recommit to doing whatever it takes to ensure that every family understands the valuable opportunity to donate tissue.” --- Seminar attendee Pamela Shute, Director, Hospital Services and Community Education, Midwest Transplant Network.

Pamela Shute, Midwest Transplant Network (left), and Lauralee Brown, MTF, were among over 150 attendees at the recent Blazing New Trails: A Conference on Tissue Consent and Conversion.  Brown, along with an extensive planning committee, organized the two-day event.

Blazing New Trails:  A Conference on Tissue Consent and Conversion, a seminar that focused exclusively on issues of tissue consent and conversion, was sponsored by MTF in a first-of-its-kind program February 27-28 in Kansas City, MO. 

Jan Finn, Chief Operating Officer of Midwest Transplant Network, welcomed over 150 attendees from 36 recovery agencies across the United States and Canada. Participants had ample opportunities to mingle with other professionals; gain new perspectives about tissue consent while considering the needs and expectations of families; understand more fully bereavement and its relation to consent; and learn best practices and applications in tissue donation consent and conversion.

Conference highlights included:

• Martha Anderson, Executive VP, Donor Services, MTF, presented a comprehensive history of tissue donation and transplantation. Part of her broad-ranging overview was the impact of organ policies on tissue banking standards and regulations, issues of public interest and trust, and the evolution of consent practices.

• Dr. Charles Corr set a compassionate tone for listening to donor families’ needs. Corr, noted author and a long-time member of the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the National Donor Family Council, encouraged professionals who work with potential donor families to be trained in grief and bereavement in addition to the technical skills they need to learn in order to do their jobs.

• Presenters shared various models of tissue consent practices, including the Dual Advocacy and Presumptivity models, the Bereavement Centered Program of Care, and the Specialized Designated Requestors model.

•  Donor family member Karen Abercrombie assessed positive aspects of her family’s experience with her sister, Julie De Rossi’s donation, and those which could have been better addressed. Abercrombie concluded: “While grieving people may understand organ donation, they largely misunderstand tissue donation.  Therefore, professionals need to be sensitive to and explicit about the overall process involved in tissue donation, including information about for-profit and not-for profit organizations, time frames for processing and placement of tissue, and when families can reasonably expect information about the disposition of their family member’s gifts.”

• Burn skin and bone recipient, Mike Nolte and large bone graft recipient Monica Montgomery added inspiration insights from their experiences. 

• Ricky Roth, Director, Donor Screening at MTF, and Sheldon Zink, Executive Director at the Institute for Bioethics and Advocacy, focused on closing the gap on referrals, deferrals and cases that abort.

Plans are underway for a second conference on issues of consent and conversion. MTF welcomes your ideas and suggestions as we develop a program with even more interactivity, value and networking opportunities.  Please contact MTF Regional Director, Lauralee Brown, at Lauralee_Brown@mtf.org or 972-491-7998.

The general public’s knowledge of organ donation is sketchy, even sketchier about tissue. That’s one reason why I, Reg Green, father of a seven-year-old-boy who was shot in Italy and whose organs and corneas were donated there, have written a book that contributes to a greater understanding of our branch of healthcare. Called The Gift That Heals, and published jointly by UNOS and the Nicholas Green Foundation, the book tells the heart-wrenching and inspiring stories of people at every stage of the organ and tissue transplantation process.

The book includes stories like the GI blinded in World War II, who had five children whom he had never seen, who one day happened to hear a television program about corneal transplant, and now, after 48 years, can see again. Another story is of a firefighter with second-and-third-degree burns on 70 percent of his body who, because of skin donation, is now back in the mainstream.

Two MTF recipients are featured in the book: Jamie Brinton (nee Palmer), Miss Utah 2000, received a tibial allograft to treat a bone cancer called osteogenic sarcoma. Police officer Mike Blood was left for dead in a hail of bullets, but thanks to donated bone, now has a full and active life that

includes golfing and fishing. Also included is Maggie Coolican, donor mother, now Coordinator for Donor Family Services at MTF, who made the first donor quilt and, in doing so, inspired one of the best-known, widely-used and most evocative tributes to donor families.

For several weeks in a row The Gift that Heals has been the #1 best seller of all 30,000 titles listed by AuthorHouse, the self-publishing company that produced it. Organ Procurement Organizations, in particular, have been ordering the book in large numbers to give to key hospital personnel, schools and volunteers. Nebraska Organ and Tissue Donor Coalition donated a copy to every public library in the state. Dr. Sue McDiarmid, professor of Pediatrics and Surgery at UCLA, says the book tells a message all medical professionals should hear.

Copies can be ordered at www.nicholasgreen.org for $13, plus shipping and handling, or at online booksellers.

On May 13, MTF employees in Edison, NJ attended a memorial ceremony honoring tissue donors.  Donor Family Services Coordinator Maggie Coolican hosted the event that included recipient speakers, essay participants of a “This I Believe” essay contest, and a song written and performed by MTF employee Ray Feliciano.  The sculpture in the MTF Memorial Garden was designed by MTF Board Member and orthopaedic surgeon Joseph Benevenia. The sculpture illustrates the donor and the recipient coming together to embrace the gift of tissue, and the tears of joy and pain shed by each.

In this second part of MTF’s series in TxFiles on the variety of tissue forms MTF provides, acellular dermal grafts are reviewed for their features and performance.

In addition to providing skin for burn treatment, MTF also provides unique acellular dermal skin tissues used in complex abdominal wall repair and failed hernia surgeries, breast reconstruction following mastectomy, facial reconstruction following trauma, and other complicated surgical cases, such as the separation of conjoined twins.

Since 2006, thousands of MTF grafts have been implanted in patients, some of whom were critically ill for months and years. Unlike synthetics and xenograft (tissue provided from animal sources such as cows and pigs), human allograft tissue integrates into the patient and allows for tissue regeneration. 

MTF acellular dermal grafts have distinct handling and storage benefits, and provide superior clinical performance compared to competitive biologic grafts, both initially in the operating room as well as over time. Many of the patients who received MTF FlexHD and DermaMatrix acellular dermal grafts now are back to work and taking care of their families.

As part of MTF's commitment to research, we work with a number of leading academic surgeons across the nation, who continue to follow the clinical outcomes of their patients and have submitted clinical data for peer-review publication. MTF anticipates the first of many medical journal articles will be published shortly on the clinical outcomes of patients who received implants of dermal tissues over a year ago.

Ever since she was a young child, Rutgers University student Rachel Kent was a sports enthusiast. She started playing soccer at the age of five.  In 2002, Rachel suffered a life-altering injury while playing the sport she loved.  She tore her ACL and medial meniscus.  After two unsuccessful surgeries, she received a tissue transplant in 2006.

“I was excited to have my surgery, yet extremely sad that someone passed away to give me this chance. I am so thankful to my donor and his family,” said Rachel.  “Some people seem to not understand the seriousness of my transplant and ask me inappropriate questions, such as ‘Do I feel weird with someone else’s tissue in my body’? The answer is, I feel amazing. There is nothing weird about a selfless donation from another human being.”  

MTF has provided military hospitals priority access to special allografts used in cartilage and joint repair and to treat burns for injured servicemen and women.

Military hospitals and facilities will be given priority status in obtaining tissue used for cartilage transplantation and meniscus repair and split thickness burns. Already in short supply, these grafts are in high demand for U.S. servicemen and women, many of whom have been seriously burned or who have undergone traumatic injury to the cartilage of the knee, ankle or elbow in the course of their duties.

“MTF is proud to assist our servicemen and servicewomen by addressing the needs of military hospitals for specialized allograft tissues that are useful in treating burns and repairing damaged knee and ankle joints,” said Bruce Stoever, MTF President and CEO. “MTF will be providing priority access to military hospitals for these grafts which are very difficult to obtain. Our military personnel do so much for our country; it’s a pleasure and an honor for us to be able to help them receive the best surgical care possible when the need arises.”