Is There a Need for Your Help?

Yes. There are many facets to operating an active, innovative, and patient focused transplant center. As has been evident through the media the financial picture of medical care has evolved in the past decade, and remains ever changing. The level of funding available to institutions for rendering medical care has been shrinking while the cost of providing medical care using the 'best practice' processes and 'state of the art' technology has increased dramatically. Hospital operating budgets are developed to maintain operations and replace capital equipment. The funding available is often insufficient to invest in improvements in areas such as patient education, research, new program development, staff education, donor awareness, patient satisfaction surveys, quality of life surveys, patient assistance funds, recruitments, facility upgrades, improved communications through the development of websites and printed materials, and return to work programs. Therefore, additional funds must be sought to accomplish these worthy endeavors.

Most people in this country say that they support organ donation. However, when faced with the death of a loved one, only about half will permit organ donation. The goal of the Organ Donation Outreach Project is to provide community education on organ donation. This education aims to encourage discussions about organ donation among the living. We want everyone in our community to have an accurate understanding of the facts so they can personally make an informed decision regarding organ donation.

The kidney program at the University of Michigan transplants approximately 233 kidneys per year and provides follow up care for over 2376 post transplant patients. As a result of the economic realities of health care, funding is difficult to find to invest in areas such as patient education, research, new program development, staff education, donor awareness programs, patient satisfaction surveys, quality of life surveys, patient assistance funds, recruitments, improved communications through the development of Kidney program web pages and kidney related printed materials, and return to work programs for kidney recipients. Additional fund is used to continue to develop the adult and pediatric kidney programs in the areas mentioned above.

The liver program at the University of Michigan transplants approximately 92 livers per year and provides follow up care for over 904 post transplant patients. As a result of the economic realities of health care, funding is difficult to find to invest in areas such as patient education to understand the MELD/PELD process, research, new program development, developing a living donor program for livers, staff education, donor awareness programs, patient satisfaction surveys, quality of life surveys, patient assistance funds, recruitments, improved communications through the development of liver program web pages and liver related printed materials, and return to work programs for liver recipients. Additional funding is used to continue to develop the adult and pediatric liver programs in the areas mentioned above.

The lung program at the University of Michigan transplants an average of 36 lungs per year and provides follow up care for over 216 post transplant patients. As a result of the economic realities of health care, funding is difficult to find to invest in areas such as patient education, research, new program development, staff education, donor awareness programs, patient satisfaction surveys, quality of life surveys, patient assistance funds, recruitments, improved communications through the development of lung program web pages and lung related printed materials, and return to work programs for lung recipients. Additional fund is used to continue to develop the adult lung program in the areas mentioned above.

Camp Michitanki (Michigan Transplant Kids) is a summer camp created by the University of Michigan Transplant Center to provide an exciting summer experience for children who have had an organ transplant. Campers participate in a variety of typical summer camp activities and have the opportunity to interact with other organ transplant recipients in a non-medical setting. Transplant nurses, physicians, social workers and other community volunteers provide a "normal" but medically supervised camping experience. Campers have the opportunity to build their self-esteem, develop new friendships, and improve their understanding of their own health conditions. The camp setting is also used to facilitate a discussion of ongoing medical needs and strategies for the integration of post-transplant regimens with routine daily activities. Funds are needed to support the camping expense as many families are financially exhausted from the costs of the transplant itself and the expensive medications and follow-up that are required. Without financial support, many families would be unable to send their child to camp.

The Jeremiah and Claire Turcotte Professorship in Transplant Surgery will recognize the role Dr. Turcotte has played as a leader in transplant surgery, his scholarly achievements, his role as a researcher, and especially, his compassion in caring for thousands of transplant patients. Dr. Turcotte is one of the most respected surgeons in the field of organ transplantation. The professorship will acknowledge the legacy that Dr. Turcotte has given to the field by stimulating young surgeons to pursue careers in transplant surgery. The professorship will also facilitate the advancement of transplant surgery, enabling our continued commitment to the recruitment of outstanding faculty and residents to continue the tradition that Dr. Turcotte began.

More than 175,000 children and adolescents have diabetes. Although insulin injections can control diabetes, this treatment is imperfect and eventually diabetics develop kidney failure, blindness, and severe vascular disease. Islet transplantation is a new procedure that may potentially offer a cure for this debilitating disease. The goal of the University of Michigan Islet Transplantation Program is to establish effective protocols to treat diabetic patients with islet transplantation.

The transplant research laboratory aims to understand the process of graft rejection and to develop techniques for preventing rejection that do not require long term immune suppression by inducing " graft tolerance". In addition, extensive studies are being conducted in the area of chronic rejection. Chronic rejection is a poorly understood process that results in graft failure over several years. There is currently no effective treatment or method of preventing chronic rejection.

The University of Michigan Transplant program has a long history of training leaders in the field of transplantation. As one of the world's leaders in medical research, the University of Michigan provides an extremely fertile environment for talented physicians and scientists to gain additional expertise and training through a fellowship. The busy clinical transplant program offers plentiful opportunities for clinical research. In turn, our patients benefit from receiving state of the art care, and have the opportunity to undergo innovative therapies unavailable at other hospitals. Endowments are needed to fund these fellowships in order to allow the transplant program to continue the tradition of groundbreaking research.

This program will capitalize on the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, located at the University of Michigan. This registry is the national database of all patients that have received a transplant or are waiting to receive a transplant. Access to this wealth of data will allow a trainee to learn clinical research techniques while producing important studies that improve the lives of patients through more effective utilization of the precious and scare resource of life saving organs.

ECMO (Extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation), the brainchild of Dr. Robert Bartlett, a University of Michigan professor of Surgery, is a sophisticated technology that helps patients with severe respiratory failure to survive. This technique has now been applied to increase the number of organs available for transplantation by allowing a greater percentage of donated organs to be used. The University of Michigan is currently the only transplant program in the country using this promising technology. Funding for a fellowship will allow a trainee to conduct studies on how this technology can best be utilized to serve the needs of our patients that are in desperate need of life saving organ transplants.

Transplant patients must currently take immunosuppressive medications in order to prevent rejection of their organ graft. Over the past three decades, University of Michigan researchers have been instrumental in the development of this field. However, there is still much that is not known about how these powerful drugs work, and especially about how they interact. Understanding these interactions is vital to achieving stable long term graft function for the patient without causing unpleasant and sometimes devastating side effects. This fellow will have the opportunity to work with a multi-disciplinary team of experts in Surgery, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pharmacy.