Saving Lives !

When we hear reports of new medical discoveries they usually come with the disclaimer that it will be years before they become available for general use.  First will come extensive medical trials and then the laborious progress through the health evaluation system to gain approval  by the drug licensing authority.

How refreshing to find that researchers at Sydney University have discovered a technique that has the potential to save thousands of premature babies who often die if they are born before twenty-six weeks.   What is even more amazing is that what is required can be put into practice without any delay - and it costs absolutely nothing !

A Sydney research team has found that simply delaying clamping the umbilical cord of a newborn for a time of sixty seconds after birth will slash the risk of the babies death in hospital by a third.

This study has been accepted for publication in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and it reports the increased volume of blood transferred from the placenta to the baby, improving blood pressure and haematocrit - the proportion of red blood cells in the blood.

At present, early clamping has been the usual procedure because of concern about such harms as delayed resuscitation, hyperthermia and Jaundice.  Trials revealed that later clamping did slightly increase the incidence of jaundice and polycythemia but that its adoption on the world scene would save somewhere between  11,000 and 100,000 lives each year.

There is other good news on the medical front.   The supply of donor organs for transplanting has always been far short of demand and many patients die waiting for a transplant that never comes
Not only does an organ available for a transplant need to have a " match " to the  recipient it needs to be in near perfect condition - and many are rejected because they are infected with hepatitis C.

This opioid epidemic that is sweeping the world is killing a lot of younger people and this is bringing a sharp increase in the number of organs presenting for transplant, but the use of shared needles that is so customary on the drug scene means that the presence of hepatitis C is also common.

Hepatitis C is now not the killer it was several years ago.   A new breed of drugs has the ability to cure this disease and so the medical profession is having a second look at the thousand or so organs that are rejected each year in the US because of hepatitis C contamination.

Patients waiting for a transplant are now being offered an option.   Accept a heart or a kidney that is hepatitis C infected with the chance that once it is in their body the application of these new drugs can achieve a cure with a 98% success rate ?

That is an option that many people would find acceptable, and it seems inevitable that this will become normal practice in the rest of the world.   It seems that the loved ones of  opioid victims are more altruistic in making organs available for donation and their younger age means that the quality of their organs is significantly improved.

On the medical front, the good news just keeps coming !