Crossing borders to facilitate live donor kidney transplantation: the Czech-Austrian kidney paired donation program - a retrospective study.

Kidney paired donation (KPD) is a valuable tool to overcome immunological barriers in living donor transplantation. While small national registries encounter difficulties in finding compatible matches, multi-national KPD may be a useful strategy to facilitate transplantation. The Czech (Prague) and Austrian (Vienna) KPD programs, both initiated in 2011, were merged in 2015. A bi-national algorithm allowed for ABO- and low-level HLA antibody-incompatible exchanges, including the option of altruistic donor-initiated domino chains. Between 2011 and 2019, 222 recipients and their incompatible donors were registered. Of those, 95.7% (Prague) and 67.9% (Vienna) entered into KPD registries, and 81 patients received a transplant (95% 3-year graft survival). Inclusion of ABO-incompatible pairs in the Czech program contributed to higher KPD transplant rates (42.6% vs. 23.6% in Austria). After 2015 (11 bi-national match runs), the median pool size increased to 18 pairs, yielding 33 transplants (8 via cross-border exchanges). While matching rates doubled in Austria (from 9.1% to 18.8%), rates decreased in the Czech program, partly due to implementation of more stringent HLA antibody thresholds. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of merging small national KPD programs to increase pool sizes and may encourage the implementation of multi-national registries to expand the full potential of KPD.

[Psychological evaluation of uterus transplantation trial participants]. / Psychologické hodnocení úcastníku studie transplantace delohy.

Uterus transplantation is a life-giving and quality-of-life enhancing transplantation. Life with transplanted uterus is a transitional phase of life for both recipients and their partners. Six deliveries of healthy children from five transplanted mothers out of 9 uterus transplantations in Sweden may encourage untimely hopes of thousands of women with absolute uterine factor infertility worldwide. Psychological evaluation might be included into all trials regarding new treatment methods and treatment procedures. Main psychological issues connected with the infertility treatment in women with absent uterus are clearly defined (especially in vitro fertilization, uterus transplantation, compliance with immunosuppressive treatment, ultrasound examinations of uterine vascular perfusion, rejection signs surveillance, embryo transfer, pregnancy, cesarean section, preterm delivery risk, puerperium, hysterectomy and immunosuppressive treatment termination). The role of psychological evaluation of participants before the admission to complicated treatment process is to choose those who will be able to cope all mentioned difficulties and unexpected complications including potential failure of the whole treatment without serious negative impact on their psychological situation. Up to now experience with psychological stability of our 7 uterus recipients and 3 uterus living donors are good although post-transplant period is especially in recipients connected with everyday psychological adaptation on the significant life changes. We are aware that psychological evaluation of our study participants will require further 3 years of follow up with publication of our results.

Mirtazapine in the treatment of adolescent anorexia nervosa. Case-control study.

OBJECTIVE: Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a serious and potentially life-threatening psychiatric disorder. Pharmacotherapeutic possibilities still remain limited. We sought to determine if there was a positive effect on body weight and body mass index (BMI) in AN patients being treated for depression or anxiety with mirtazapine. METHODS: Using a case-control design, we found nine female patients with AN who had been treated with mirtazapine for depression or anxiety during hospitalization in our department. We also found nine female controls with AN, who had not received any pharmacotherapy. The two groups of patients were matched according to age and BMI. Case and control groups did not differ significantly in age (15.2 +/- 1.9 Vs. 14.7 +/- 1.7 years; P = 0.549), or in BMI (15.6 +/- 2.3 Vs. 15.6 +/- 2.1; P = 0.946) at baseline. Weight and BMI were evaluated at baseline and again after the patients had completed 1, 2, 3 and 4 weeks of treatment. RESULTS: The mean dose of mirtazapine was 21.7 +/- 1.8 mg at the end of week 4. Using ANOVA Repeated Measures, we found no significant differences between cases and controls with regard to weight (P = 0.981) or BMI (P = 0.576). However, there was a non-significant trend in patients which had been treated with mirtazapine which showed slightly more improvement, in the measured parameters, at the end of weeks 1, 2 and 3, compared to controls. CONCLUSION: Results are limited by small sample size. However, the use of mirtazapine could be useful in the treatment of AN in adolescence.