Advancing Your Health

Beginning in May 2012, the Emory Transplant Center will provide pre- and post-transplant services for renal patients in northwest Georgia at our new location in Cartersville. Along with our two existing satellite offices in Savannah and Dublin, the new office in Cartersville means that more Georgians can receive kidney transplant evaluations and follow-up care from Emory professionals without making a trip to Atlanta. Emory’s Kidney Transplant Program:

• Provides comprehensive evaluations for kidney and pancreas transplantation, as well as state-of-the-art transplant follow-up care
• Offers a highly skilled team of specialists in the care of kidney transplant patients and living donors
• Ranks as one of the top programs of its kind in the country, with success rates higher than expected for both patient and graft survival*
• Performed 215 kidney transplant procedures in 2011 – the largest number of [...]
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As a personal trainer and general manager of Workout Anytime in Decatur, GA, Mark Villanti believes being healthy and living life to the fullest is a top priority. Fitness is Mark’s passion and he especially enjoys running ultra-marathons and helping his clients get into shape. One day, a client of Mark’s mentioned that her husband was in need of a kidney transplant and that neither she nor any other loved one was a match. Mark got to thinking, ‘what if I became a donor?’ Coincidentally, back in college as a Sports Science major, Mark conducted research on renal failure and gained a keen understanding of what physical limitations a person on dialysis experiences – being tied to a dialysis machines for hours at a time, multiple times during the week. [...]

Dear Donor Family, It has been eight years since my life saving heart transplant, and once again, I want to thank my donor and donor family for the gift of life. I suffered my first of three heart attacks at age 40, and for eighteen years I struggled with heart disease. At age 58 my heart was failing and I was told that I would need a heart transplant to live. I was put on the on the transplant list and waited at home for four months. Waiting and not knowing if the call would come in time. At that point I did the only thing I knew how to do, pray. When the call did come that there was a heart for me, all I could think about was that someone I [...]

“My donor was an 11 year old girl from Arkansas; that is all I know of her but not a day has ever gone by that I haven't thought of her. Words will never begin to explain enough what has been given to me.

I believe I was given more than just a liver; I have her legacy. Even if I don't know her name, her existence and memory is alive in me. My liver isn't just an organ to me; it is a part of her."

You can share Terri's story here.

If you haven't signed up to become a donor yet and are needing more information, please visit Donate Life.

Since 2003, April has served as National Donate Life Month and provided the health and transplant communities with an entire month of local, regional and national activities to help support and raise awareness around organ donation and celebrate those who have given the gift of life to others by donating. We’ve seen some amazing gifts of generosity here at Emory since National Donate Life Month last year, and in honor of the month, we’d like to celebrate those members of our community who have truly given of themselves in an effort to save the lives of others. We kicked off Donate Life Month last year with the help of Pamela Lesane, an Emory Healthcare employee and now patient, after making a very generous gift to her own sister. After beginning her career with Emory Healthcare in Guest Services, Pamela came into contact with a transplant coordinator who asked her if [...]

A life free from taking anti-rejection medications post-transplant…is it possible? After transplant, patients must take multiple medications to keep their bodies from rejecting the new organ. The side effects of these immunosuppressant drugs, for many, can be grueling. Side effects range from fatigue to high blood pressure to increased risk of infection. Researchers are currently evaluating whether it’s possible for kidney transplant patients to avoid use of immunosuppressant drugs post transplant. They’ve found that it’s possible that by not only transplanting the living donor organ but also some of the donor’s immune producing cells, it  may be possible to deceive the recipient’s immune system into accepting the new organ as its own. To evaluate the likelihood of decreased reliance on immunosuppressant drugs for kidney transplant patients, researchers collect immune system-producing stem cells and other immunity cells from the living donor's bloodstream. They infuse transplant patients with radiation and medications [...]

Georgia native and Douglasville resident, Terri Lynne was born with a rare disease called Tyrosinemia, it is a genetic disorder characterized by elevated blood levels of the amino acid tyrosine, a building block of most proteins.  Terri’s disease caused her liver cancer that led to a liver transplant at the age of 13.   As a child, Terri had her transplant at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston and was performed by Emory’s Dr. Thomas Dodson, who started the pediatric liver transplant program in 1990.  Terri was only the 8th pediatric liver transplant in Georgia.  It’s been 20 years since Terri’s transplant, and she feels it is important to give back to the transplant community. So much so, in fact, that when Terri visits the Emory Transplant Center for her own appointments, she frequently shares her [...]

Just before New Year’s Day of 2012 you couldn’t find Dr. Nicole Turgeon, Emory kidney and pancreas transplant surgeon inside Emory Hospital walls as she normally is. Instead, Dr. Turgeon was taking time out of her holiday schedule for a cause she really believes in– organ donation. Dr. Turgeon jetted off to Pasadena, CA on December 29, 2012 to help decorate the Donate Life float for the Rose Bowl Parade. "Although a small gesture, I wanted to pay tribute to the families who so selflessly give the gift of life to others," she says of the experience. "I have seen the float on TV over the past several years and had wanted to participate. I was able to make it work this year with the incredible support of my family." Each year for the past six years, Donate Life has decorated a Rose [...]

Emory University Hospital transplant nurse Allison Batson has spent many years caring for patients in need of a life-saving organ transplant. She has seen many patients’ lives saved because of the gift of organ donation … and many others lost because a matching organ simply could not be located in time. Recently though, Allison was not only in the position to provide care and comfort at the bedside of a transplant patient in desperate need of a kidney transplant, she selflessly gave of herself – literally- by becoming an organ donor to 23 year-old Clay Taber of Columbus, Georgia. Clay graduated from Auburn University in August and is soon to marry his college sweetheart in a few months. While he has been eagerly looking toward his [...]

Organ transplant rejection is a fear for many people faced with a possible need for transplantation. For this group of transplant candidates, some good news has come from recent research taking place at the Emory Transplant Center. Emory’s research shows that a new immunosuppressant protocol could convince a transplant recipient's immune cells to switch sides by converting cells that normally recognize and attack transplanted organs to cells that control the immune response instead—and protect the grafted organ. This may give patients a better chance of avoiding rejection of the transplanted organ and help them wean off anti-rejection drugs over time, reducing the rate of long-term complications after transplant. Emory’s Dr. Mandy Ford, assistant professor of surgery, is the senior author on the study, published this month in [...]