{"id":1586,"date":"2014-02-19T15:36:25","date_gmt":"2014-02-19T20:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/52.229.122.34\/en\/?p=1586"},"modified":"2021-02-17T14:42:40","modified_gmt":"2021-02-17T19:42:40","slug":"1000th-kidney-transplant-its-so-important-to-pay-it-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/uncategorized\/1000th-kidney-transplant-its-so-important-to-pay-it-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"1,000th kidney transplant: \u201cIt\u2019s so important to pay it forward\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text-center\"><em>\u201cTo feel the joy I\u2019m having right now\u2026it\u2019s hard to imagine,\u201d said Sharon Bathurst, the 1,000<\/em><sup><em>th<\/em><\/sup><em> patient to have a kidney transplant at TOH.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Tears of joy spilled down Sharon Bathurst\u2019s cheeks as she prepared to go home after her Jan. 28 kidney transplant \u2013 the 1,000<sup>th<\/sup> since TOH amalgamated on April 1, 1998.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a new life,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m going to have more time for my family and four grandchildren.\u201d She\u2019s planning to teach her four-year-old granddaughter how to fish, using the extra time she\u2019ll have from not going to dialysis three days a week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s rewarding to know that we\u2019ve helped 1,000 patients either get off dialysis or prevent them from ever needing dialysis,\u201d said Dr. Greg Knoll, one of the 10 physicians involved in the highly specialized transplant program. \u201cIt gives them freedom to travel and work and to eat a more normal diet \u2013 all of which are very difficult while on dialysis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>About 382 kidney transplants were performed before 1998, starting in the 1960s at the former Civic Hospital. In the last decade, TOH has done about 70 transplants per year, up from 40 to 50 per year before that.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about the current challenges, Dr. Knoll replied: \u201cDonors. Donors. Donors. We do not have enough donors to give a kidney transplant to everyone in need. This is a problem in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bathurst agrees that donors are vital, and her family will help encourage people to donate organs. \u201cIt\u2019s so important to pay it forward,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kidney transplant changes over the years:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Increased numbers of living-donor transplants, especially since 1998. About half are now from a living donor.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. John Mahoney was the first surgeon in the Ottawa area to remove a living-donor kidney via laparoscopy. It\u2019s now standard practice, and it allows the donor to recover much faster.<\/li>\n<li>Anti-rejection medications have improved. Acute rejection used to happen in up to half of patients but now happens in less than 10 percent.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cTo feel the joy I\u2019m having right now\u2026it\u2019s hard to imagine,\u201d said Sharon Bathurst, the 1,000th patient to have a kidney transplant at TOH. Tears of joy spilled down Sharon Bathurst\u2019s cheeks as she prepared to go home after her Jan. 28 kidney transplant \u2013 the 1,000th since TOH amalgamated on April 1, 1998. \u201cIt\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":1588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}