How Is COVID-19 Impacting Organ Transplants?

When asked how the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is impacting patients in need of an organ transplant, Sridhar Tayur said there is good news and bad news on that front. Tayur is the Ford distinguished research chair and professor of operations management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, and he has been paying close attention to the subject of organ transplants during the current crisis.  "The good news is that transplants are considered critical surgeries and therefore CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] has given guidelines on how to keep doing them," Tayur said. "So unlike elective surgeries that, as you might have heard, are being postponed, transplant is considered a critical surgery and therefore they are not, en masse being postponed. Some transplants are, in fact taking place." The bad news is that there are limitations on the type of transplants that can be done during this time, he explained. For example, a patient getting a kidney transplant from a living donor will have to wait until this pandemic is over, the rational being that those patients can continue to receive dialysis in the meantime. Then there are deceased-donor transplants (liver or kidney) and that's where things get tricky, given the current healthcare crisis. "Part of the issue is they want to make sure that both the patient and the deceased donor are COVID-19 free," Tayur said. The ...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: Business Source Type: news