CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Clinic and UH are requiring that both living donors and recipients of an organ transplant be vaccinated prior to the procedure, according to statements released Monday.
The policy is being put in place to protect patients, both hospital systems said.
The hospitals made the policy change because transplant recipients must take immunosuppressant drugs to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ as foreign. This makes the recipients highly susceptible to becoming infected with severe COVID-19, press reports say. Some health experts estimate that transplant recipients’ risk of dying from COVID-19 is as high as 30%, according to press reports.
So far, the Clinic has not removed anyone from the transplant wait list because he or she was not vaccinated, the hospital system said.
Patients currently on the Clinic’s transplant waiting list have until Nov. 1 to meet the Clinic COVID-19 safety protocol for organ transplantation from a deceased donor. If patients waiting for an organ from a deceased donor are not vaccinated after that date, they will be made inactive on the United Network for Organ Sharing waiting list, the Clinic said.
“The health and safety of our patients is our top priority,” the Clinic said.
In the case of organ transplants using a living donor, which involves the living donor undergoing a scheduled surgery, COVID-19 vaccination is required for both donor and recipient before surgery, the Clinic said.
“For the living donor, preventing COVID-19 infection around the time of a surgical operation is crucial,” the statement said. “For the transplant candidate, in addition to a major operation, medications taken after an organ transplant weaken a person’s immune response. Serious complications of COVID-19 are most likely to develop in those individuals who have weakened immune systems, as their body has a reduced ability to fight and recover from infections. The FDA-authorized vaccines have been determined to be safe and effective and are the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
UH said that, in light of recent studies pointing to the risk solid organ recipients and living donors face if they contract COVID-19, the UH Transplant Institute also will begin requiring COVID vaccinations for its patient population.
“We are following policies in this area already put into place at several other Ohio and national systems, and recommended by national transplant associations,” UH said in a statement. “For living donors, prevention of COVID-19 around the time of surgery is essential. The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, and the best way to prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19.”
Summa Health and MetroHealth System do not perform transplants.
A growing number of U.S. hospitals are pushing people who remain unvaccinated down or even off of transplantation waitlists, according to press reports.
A Colorado-based health system recently said it was not performing organ transplants on patients not vaccinated against COVID-19 in “almost all situations,” press reports said. Colorado’s UCHealth’s transplant center sent a patient a letter stating that she would be “inactivated” on a kidney transplant waiting list and had 30 days to start coronavirus vaccination. If she refused to be vaccinated, it said, she would be removed from the list.
UCHealth said its policy “increase[s] the likelihood that a transplant will be successful and the patient will avoid rejection.”
The University of Washington medical centers also require transplant patients to be fully vaccinated prior to their procedures unless they have a medical exemption, press reports said. “UW Medicine has long required patients awaiting a solid organ transplant to be current on all critical vaccinations prior to their procedure,” the health system said.
Transplant centers across the country normally require patients to stop smoking and drinking alcohol, get other vaccinations or pledge to take important medications to make sure their body doesn’t reject the transplant, according to press reports.
Organ donations in the United States are coordinated by the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). But the organization does not set requirements for how transplant centers list or remove candidates, press reports said.
More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list, and only a fraction of those seeking a kidney got one in 2020, according to the federal government.
Article From & Read More ( Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals stop transplants for unvaccinated patients - cleveland.com )https://ift.tt/2YI6ewV
Health
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals stop transplants for unvaccinated patients - cleveland.com"
Post a Comment