They did detect an increased risk in men, but only when cholesterol was at almost twice the average level.

The report in Annals of Neurology recommends using a different type of fat in the blood, non-fasting triglycerides, to measure the risk.

The Stroke Association said triglyceride tests needed to become routine to reduce the risk of stroke.

A total of 150,000 people have a stroke in the UK each year. Most are ischemic strokes, in which a clot in an artery disrupts the brain’s blood supply.

The research followed 13,951 men and women, who took part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study.

During the 33-year study, 837 men and 837 women had strokes.

Poor predictor

They reported that the cholesterol levels in women were not associated with stroke, while there was only an association in men with levels higher than 9mmol/litre. The average in UK men is 5.5.

The researchers at Copenhagen University Hospital said this was “difficult to explain” as LDL, or bad, cholesterol is known to cause atherosclerosis which can block arteries.

They did notice a link, in both men and women, between the risk of stroke and non-fasting triglycerides.

They believe these fats are a marker for “remnant cholesterol” which is left behind when other forms of cholesterol are made.

Dr Peter Coleman, deputy director of research at The Stroke Association said: “Tests for triglyceride levels aren’t routinely carried out in the UK unless there is significant concern.”

“We know that high levels of fats, such as cholesterol, increase your risk of having a stroke. However, this research shows the importance of measuring the fat triglyceride, as well as cholesterol.

“This study highlights the importance of measuring triglycerides routinely in order to reduce a person’s risk of stroke.”

source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12505230

Heart disease threatens the lives of millions, but with only limited hearts available for transplant, medical science has long yearned for a definitive fix to repair or replace this most vital organ.

Troy Golden, a pastor from Oklahoma, was born with a heart that would one day break. A genetic condition known as Marfan’s syndrome has been slowly attacking his body tissue since birth including around his heart and valves.

At the age of 41, he had to undergo life-saving surgery, replacing valves and reshaping his heart’s walls. But his condition continued to worsen. In January 2010, he was put on the heart transplant list, but time ran out without a donor.

“Troy’s heart was so bad that a traditional heart pump wouldn’t be enough,” explains Troy’s cardiologist Dr Doug Horstmanshof. “So, we decided to try something different – completely replacing the heart.”

In September last year, Troy became one of the few people in the US to have his entire heart replaced with a device called the Total Artificial Heart. It’s made of plastic and weighs 160 grams and is a little larger than a biological heart. It is powered by a pneumatic pump that you carry around in a rucksack.

Awe inspiring moment

Dr James Long, Troy’s surgeon, recalled the moment the heart was implanted into Troy. “It was admittedly rather awe-inspiring,” he says. And it was ominous to look inside the chest and know that the only thing keeping him alive was the synthetic pump that we had just replaced his heart with.”

Troy has had to get used to the non-stop sound of the pneumatic pump. But he looks and feels remarkably well and is overwhelmed by what has been done for him.

“It’s awesome,” he said “to be out of the hospital and to be able to come back home and to be able to come back to some normal life.”

“You can’t even just really comprehend taking your heart out, you know, without a heart you’re not alive.”

The Total Artificial Heart has done more than buy Troy some time. It has given him his life back and it has given him hope. But this is not a permanent solution. His heart’s batteries must be constantly charged, spares must stand at the ready. The risk of infection and clotting add to the constant worry.

Medical challenge

For now Troy must again endure the long wait for a donor heart, but there are other solutions on the horizon. New avenues of research are focussing on efforts to assist, rather than replace the heart.

Increasingly, in patients suffering from heart failure, miniaturised pumps are being used to assist heart function. They are about the size of a cigar and are essentially plugged into the main pumping chamber of the heart to help it along.

Unlike Troy’s artificial heart, they can be left in place indefinitely. But perhaps more remarkable is the fact that these pumps can sometime be removed, once a damaged heart has recovered.

And it is the potential for hearts to actually recover, after having been damaged, that is being investigated in some of the most exciting research going on today.

Much interest centres on stem cells because they are the closest natural thing to the body’ s spare parts and, under the right conditions, they have the potential to transform into a huge number of different cell types with specialised functions. Because of this, they can take part in the process of renewal – replacing diseased and damaged tissues.

Preliminary results are highly controversial, but there is a growing body of evidence that suggests we may in the future be able to harness the heart’s potential regenerative capacity for future therapies.

Growing new hearts

More radically, Dr Doris Taylor, of the University of Minnesota, has been using stem cells to actually build new hearts in the laboratory.

She has achieved this with a rat heart by stripping it of its cells, then re-populating the resulting perfectly heart-shaped scaffold with stem cells, which adapt into heart tissue, so that in time the heart begins to beat again.

“.. the thought would be that we would take a heart, probably from a pig .. wash all the cells out, and then take your cells and grow enough of them to .. build a heart that matches your body and have it transplanted into you. That’s the home run,” says Dr Taylor.

If the clinical application can be made to work, it is a revolutionary if relatively distant possibility.

For Troy and the millions of people like him for whom heart failure is a reality, this work is of vital importance.

There is the very real possibility here that, within our lifetimes, scientists might finally find the cure they’re looking for.

While their search for that magic bullet remedy is far from at an end, each new discovery brings them another step closer.

source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12422348

This means that serious psychiatric diseases that might not have shown up until kids were in their teens or twenties – or might never had developed at all – are starting in children as young as 12 who smoke marijuana.

The link between using pot and developing serious mental illness is strongest in the youngest smokers – 12- to 15-year-olds, or kids even younger, said Dr. Matthew Large in an interview with Reuters Health.

“We have to (tell) people who have marijuana in their pockets not to give it to younger people,” said Large, who headed up the research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Large and his colleagues looked at thousands of patients with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. People with psychotic disorders lose touch with reality — usually starting in adolescence or young adulthood.

The authors of the new study found that in the subjects who had been pot smokers, the psychotic symptoms began nearly 3 years earlier than in those who had not been marijuana users.

People with schizophrenia often have hallucinations (they see things that aren’t there) and delusions (they’re often convinced something improbable is true, when it isn’t); they also tend to have unusual or bizarre behavior, social problems, and general difficulty in coping with life. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 2.4 million American adults, or about one in every 100 people over age 18, have schizophrenia.

The vast majority of young people who use marijuana don’t develop psychosis. And so far, no one’s been able to prove that smoking marijuana actually causes psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, but the new research adds to “growing evidence” that it does, at least in some people, said Dr. Michael T. Compton at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, DC, who worked on the study.

A number of studies had already suggested that people develop schizophrenia at a younger age if they’ve been using pot – even if they weren’t heavy users — but not all researchers agreed.

To get a better sense of the evidence, Large and Compton and their colleagues systematically combined and analyzed data from 83 studies involving more than 22,000 people with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia: 8,167 who used marijuana or other substances, and 14,352 who did not.

“Those who used marijuana had an earlier age at onset of the disorder, by (about 32 months) on average, than those who had not used marijuana,” Compton said in e-mail to Reuters Health.

Why was there disagreement in the past over whether this effect really exists? The reasons lie in the way the individual studies might have been done, the researchers say in their article, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

In their larger analysis, they made sure to account for several factors that authors of the individual studies might not have considered. For example, psychosis develops earlier in boys than in girls – but Large and Compton found that even when they adjusted for that difference, the pot smokers still developed psychotic symptoms earlier.

Also, older people are less likely to be smoking pot than younger patients, so if the individual studies had different proportions of various age groups, the results might have been skewed. Taking that factor into account, the researchers still found that marijuana users developed mental illness at a younger age.

They also tried to see whether their findings could be explained by the year the research was done (because pot may have become more potent over time), whether the research had been done according to good scientific principles, and whether the investigators had defined the start of mental illness according to the date it was diagnosed instead of the date the symptoms started (the date symptoms started is more accurate). But they kept coming back to the same result: people with psychotic disorders who smoked marijuana had symptoms of mental illness at a younger age than those who didn’t use pot.

The researchers did not look at whether family history of psychosis played a role in determining who was most vulnerable to marijuana’s apparent early-triggering effect.

Are there some kids who are more at risk of psychosis from smoking pot than others? “I’m sure there are,” Large said. Kids with a family history of psychosis, or those with some psychotic symptoms but not full-blown schizophrenia are at particular risk, he said. But also at risk are kids who are struggling, not doing well at school or living in bad situations at home.

One study found that compared to people who didn’t use marijuana, people over 18 who did use it had twice the risk of mental illness, but kids under 15 had five times the risk, Large said.

There are two main messages to take away from this work, Large said. One is that there’s probably something in marijuana that triggers schizophrenia. What that is, isn’t clear yet. “Schizophrenia is still a mystery,” he said. “Psychotic illnesses are horrible for the people who have them, and terrible for their families too.”

The second message is far more important, he believes. Public health campaigns on the dangers of marijuana are focusing on older users, Large said, and overlooking the pre-teens and young adolescents who get their pot from older peers and even older siblings at home.

“Even if the onset of psychosis were inevitable (for a particular individual),” Large’s team writes, “an extra 2 or 3 years of psychosis-free functioning could allow many patients to achieve the important developmental milestones” of adolescence. That extra time could allow a young person to finish school and gain other skills that might reduce the lifelong disability that so often accompanies mental illnesses.

Whereas most studies like his are presented at medical conferences, Large said he’s not going to bother traveling around to announce his results to other doctors. Instead, he said, he wants to talk about his results in public forums.

“I’m not a marketing expert,” he said, “but we have to find a way to tell young kids to hold off.” We might not be able to convince them to never use pot, he added, but they need to wait until they’re older – a message, he acknowledged, that will be tricky to deliver.

SOURCE: uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/07/health-us-smoking-pot-idUKTRE7166BI20110207?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

(Reuters) – Scientists have shown how an “artificial pancreas” can help pregnant women with type 1 diabetes and say their finding could significantly reduce cases of stillbirth and death among diabetic expectant mothers.

British researchers used a so-called “closed-loop insulin delivery system” or artificial pancreas, in 10 pregnant women with Type 1 diabetes and found it provided the right amount of insulin at the right time, maintained near normal blood sugar, and prevented dangerous drops in blood sugar levels at night.

“To discover an artificial pancreas can help maintain near-normal glucose levels in these women is very promising,” said Helen Murphy of Cambridge University, who led the study.

The experimental artificial pancreas was created by combining a continuous glucose monitor, or CGM, with an insulin pump, both of which are already used separately by many people with type 1 diabetes.

Previous trials in children with the condition found that using an artificial pancreas system at night improved blood glucose control and reduced hypoglycaemia — when the level of glucose in the blood falls too low.

The bodies of type 1 diabetes sufferers become unable to properly break down sugar and if untreated, blood vessels and nerves are destroyed, organs fail and patients can die.

Pregnancy can be particularly risky for women with diabetes as hormonal changes make it very difficult to keep blood glucose levels within a safe range, especially at night.

As a result of high blood glucose levels, babies of women with diabetes are five times as likely to be stillborn, three times as likely to die in their first months of life and twice as likely to have a major deformity, the researchers said.

Data from previous studies suggest that pregnant women with type 1 diabetes spend an average of ten hours a day with glucose levels outside recommended targets, said Murphy, whose findings were published in the journal Diabetes Care.

This increases the risk of birth defects, stillbirth, neonatal death, preterm delivery, oversized babies and other complications.

Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disease in which the body destroys its own ability to make insulin, accounts for around 10 percent of all people with diabetes. The more common type 2 diabetes is often linked to bad diet and lack of exercise.

Iain Frame, director of research at the charity Diabetes UK, which part-funded the study, said that although it was a small and early stage trial, the results were encouraging.

“It’s a fantastic example of how existing technologies…can be adapted and developed to benefit as many people with diabetes as possible,” he said in a statement.

The researchers said more studies were now needed on larger numbers of women to validate their findings, and to see if the system could be developed for use outside of a hospital.

source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/31/health-us-pancreas-diabetes-idUKTRE70U00N20110131?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews

Steven Greggains is looking forward to getting back behind the wheel of his HGV.

Just a few weeks ago, his licence was under threat because of his type 2 diabetes.

He wasn’t allowed to drive while taking insulin to control his condition.

As a result, he was obese, he was binge-eating and was also taking the maximum medication to cope with his diabetes.

Even losing two stone (12.7kg) in weight didn’t help.

Recent research on 34 obese type 2 diabetic patients showed that almost three-quarters of those who underwent gastric bypass surgery showed no clinical signs of type 2 diabetes after two years.

Doctors at Charing Cross Hospital in London recommended gastric bypass surgery to Steven, as a result, and he went under the knife at the Imperial Weight Centre.

He was discharged two days later and within five days, Steven’s diabetes had gone into remission and he had stopped his medication.

“Food was the biggest part of my life,” he says.

“Now I eat a balanced diet. Before I had an insatiable appetite. The diabetes cure gives me the strength to say no thank you to food.”

Steven was 25 stone (158.7kg) at his heaviest. Now he weighs around 16 stone (101 kg) and would like to reach 12 or 13 (76-82 kg) stone.

But he readily admits that it will be a long road.

“They prepared me for how I would feel after the op but I didn’t realise how difficult it would be,” he said.

Steven has been given a three-month eating plan which includes only soups initially, then moves onto puree food, then a soft food diet and finally a normal diet.

Key gut hormones

Steven is one of around 2.5 million people in the UK thought to suffer from type 2 diabetes.

The condition occurs either when not enough insulin is produced by the pancreas or the insulin that is produced does not work properly.

Dr Carel Le Roux, who looked after Steven during his treatment and is a member of ESCO (experts in severe and complex obesity management), has carried out research into the effect of bariatric surgery on type 2 diabetes.

He calls it a “double whammy” effect – weight loss combined with remission of type 2 diabetes.

“By increasing the amount of insulin produced and improving the body’s sensitivity to the blood sugar-regulating hormone, obese diabetic patients can be effectively cured of the condition,” he said.

Why this happens is still not clear, but a recent study by Dr Le Roux suggests that it’s not simply the result of losing weight.

Steven weighed 25 stones at his heaviest and could not control his diabetes

The most likely explanation for the improved control of blood sugar lies in the effect the surgery has on key gut hormones, known as glucagon-like peptides (GLP-1).

These hormones are thought to mimic the hormones responsible for initiating insulin release from the pancreas, thus helping to restore blood sugar levels to normal.

Three weeks after the operation, Steve is trying to fill his days with activities other than eating and is doing a lot of walking his dog.

But he and his wife don’t go out as much as they did.

It’s something he is happy to get used to.

“It’s all down to me for the future. I’ve still got to stay off the sugar, but it’s been life-changing,” he says.

“People see me now and say ‘wow’. I feel really good about myself and I feel healthy too.”

source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12022297

An online questionnaire drawn up by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) also asks for views on donation of eggs and sperm within families, such as between cousins, siblings, mothers and daughters, and on the number of families any single sperm or egg donor should be allowed to help create.

Fertility experts warned recently that a drastic lack of sperm donors in Britain means women wanting babies are resorting to importing semen from abroad or using do-it-yourself insemination kits bought on the internet.

Many experts think a change in the law in 2005 in Britain, which removed the donor’s right to anonymity was what led to a sharp fall in the number of donations.

A study published last week found that donor-conceived children who make contact with their biological parents do not seem to be negatively affected. It also found that the majority of donors who have contact with their offspring report positive experiences.

Payment for tissue or organ donation is not allowed by law in Europe, but expenses and compensation payments for inconvenience and loss of earnings are allowed.

British authorities currently reimburse the expenses of donors, but do not pay compensation for inconvenience, and the HFEA says fertility clinics are reporting that some donors end up losing out financially.

By contrast Spain, which is often held up as an example of success in fertility donation, offers lump sum compensation of 900 euros for egg donors and 45 euros for each valid sperm sample produced, regardless of actual expenses incurred.

In Denmark, sperm donors get between 50 and 150 euros for undergoing tests, the use of their time and travel expenses.

“We want to make sure that we have the best policies in place so that there are no unnecessary barriers in the way of those wishing to donate whilst protecting those who are born as a result of donation,” said Lisa Jardine, chair of the HFEA.

“The donation of sperm and eggs is a generous act and donors have helped many thousands of people achieve their dream of having a child.”

She said HFEA experts would consider evidence from other countries as well as public views before any changes were made.

On family donation, which includes many different kinds of relationships, the HFEA is asking for views on whether all intra-family donations are acceptable, or whether some raise social or ethical issues that people are uncomfortable with. For example if a daughter donates eggs to her mother, the resulting baby would be both her biological child, and her social sister.

“We want to hear a range of views from both those directly affected and those who are interested in the issues,” the HFEA said in a statement. The consultation runs until April and can be found at www.hfea.co.uk/donationreview. Decisions will be made at an HFEA meeting in July.

Scientists have identified a way of prompting nerve system repair in multiple sclerosis (MS).

Studies on rats by Cambridge and Edinburgh University researchers identified how to help stem cells in the brain regenerate myelin sheath, needed to protect nerve fibres.

MS charities said the “exciting” Nature Neuroscience work offered hope of restoring physical functions.

But they cautioned it would be some years before treatments were developed.

MS is caused by a defect in the body’s immune system, which turns in on itself, and attacks the fatty myelin sheath.

It is thought to affect around 100,000 people in the UK.

Around 85% have the relapsing/remitting form of the condition, in which “flare-ups” which cause disability, are followed by a recovery of a level of the lost physical function.

In this form of MS, there does appear to be some natural myelin repair.

However, around 10% of people are diagnosed with a progressive form of MS, where the decline continues without any periods of remission.

In addition, people with the relapsing/remitting form do often go on to develop what is called secondary progressive MS, which affects them in the same way.

‘Missing link’
Scientists have been looking at how they might develop treatments for these two groups.

In MS, loss of the myelin sheaths which act as insulating layers, leads to the nerve fibres in the brain becoming damaged.

These fibres are important as they send messages to other parts of the body.

This study identified a signalling pathway in the brain which can encourage the brain’s own stem cells to regenerate new myelin.

The scientists believe this will help in identifying drugs to encourage myelin repair in MS patients.

However, much more work is needed – both to test if the mechanism works in people with MS and to see what drugs might be needed to promote the effect.

Professor Charles ffrench-Constant, of the University of Edinburgh’s MS Society Centre for MS Research, said: “The aim of our research is to slow the progression of MS with the eventual aim of stopping and reversing it.

“This discovery is very exciting as it could potentially pave the way to find drugs that could help repair damage caused to the important layers that protect nerve cells in the brain.”

Professor Robin Franklin, director of the MS Society’s Centre for Myelin Repair at the University of Cambridge, said: “Therapies that repair damage are the missing link in treating MS.

“In this study we have identified a means by which the brain’s own stem cells can be encouraged to undertake this repair, opening up the possibility of a new regenerative medicine for this devastating disease.”

The study was funded by the MS Society and the National MS Society in the US.

Simon Gillespie, chief executive of the MS Society, which part-funded the research, said: “For people with MS this is one of the most exciting developments in recent years.

“It’s hard to put into words how revolutionary this discovery could be and how critical it is to continue research into MS.”

Pam Macfarlane, chief executive of the MS Trust added: “Exploration of processes that might repair areas of damage to myelin, is another important area of MS research and this may eventually allow people to recover function that has been lost to disability.

“This is still an early study in rodents but it will be very interesting to see how it develops.”

source: http://www.healthcareadvices.com/latest-news/study-offers-hope-of-repairing-ms-damag/

Dame Judi Dench leads fight for government action after research shows 40 per cent of youngsters are exposed to smoke

By Jonathan Owen

Dame Judi Dench joined calls last night for a ban on smoking in cars, citing the dangers to the health of youngsters.

“Children are still being exposed to passive smoke, which is extremely harmful to developing lungs,” said the actress.

Dame Judi, whose husband Michael Williams died of lung cancer in 2001, is vice president of the British Lung Foundation, which is calling for a ban.

She added: “I am happy to offer my support … I encourage anyone who wants the Government to make children’s lung health a priority to sign up to the petition.”

Pressure is mounting on the Government to extend the smoking ban to cars. Such a move would prevent some of the 22,000 new cases each year of asthma caused by passive smoking, the charity claims.

Research published in The Lancet last month showed 40 per cent of children were exposed to passive smoke each year, accounting for 165,000 deaths worldwide.

Dame Judi is one of 12,000 people to have signed the petition calling for a ban on smoking in cars carrying children. The charity’s aim is to collect 50,000 signatures. Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, called on the Govenment to continue campaigns discouraging parents from smoking in front of their children. She said: “While we can’t pass legislation to prohibit smoking in the home, smoking in cars can and should be prohibited by law.”

Simon Clark, the director of the smokers’ group Forest, conceded: “It’s reasonable to encourage people not to light up in a small confined space if children are present,” but he dismissed calls for a ban as “unnecessarily heavy-handed”. He added: “It’s a small step to far more illiberal measures like banning smoking in all private vehicles or, worse, banning smoking in the home. Enough is enough.”

A ban cannot happen quickly enough for Lynda Mitchell. The 53-year-old, from Bristol, has never smoked but is dying of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “I found being exposed to passive smoke in the car the worst because there was no escape. I want parents to know that what happened to me could happen to their children if they continue to smoke near them.”

Smoking in vehicles carrying children is illegal in parts of Australia, Canada, the United States (including California), as well as Cyprus. Mauritius is the only country to have banned smoking in cars outright.

source: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/call-to-ban-smoking-in-cars-with-child-passengers-2158129.html

Including too many ready-made items in a Sunday roast could lead to excessive salt intake, says research from a health charity.

In a survey of 600 supermarket products, Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) found that unnecessary amounts of salt are being hidden in certain items of prepared food.

But cooking and preparing fresh food reduces levels dramatically, it says.

UK supermarkets say they are leading the way in salt reduction in Europe.

Consensus Action on Salt and Health (CASH) said a family Sunday roast can be a “balanced and healthy” meal.

But it found that choosing all ready-made products for a typical Sunday lunch – meat, vegetables and condiments – could result in nearly 10 grams of salt being consumed.

An adult’s daily maximum recommended salt intake is 6g.

But if people read the labels and buy fresh meat and veg, it is also possible to cook a roast dinner with less than 2g of salt, CASH says.

This salt content is almost six times less than the total for the saltiest products.

Some of the saltiest products CASH found were a peppered beef brisket joint with mustard and pepper stuffing from Asda (2.3g per 212.5g portion), Tesco Finest root vegetable mash (1.6g per 250g portion) and Sainsbury’s red cabbage (1.01g per 150g portion).

A portion of Morrison’s English mustard contains 0.5g of salt, as much as a packet of crisps.

Just a trace

However, CASH’s survey also found many pre-prepared products which were low in or contained only a trace of salt.

Asda’s butter-basted chicken breast joint contains only 0.3g of salt per portion.

And it found Sainsbury’s buttered green vegetables and Tesco Value Yorkshire puddings contained just a trace of salt.

Sarah Cordey from the British Retail Consortium said the survey disregarded the large amount of fresh food customers use when preparing a Sunday meal.

She said the big supermarkets are doing “all they can” to reduce salt content.

“Our members are Europe’s leaders in salt reduction and have made excellent progress in the last decade.

“The Food Standards Agency has found supermarkets’ own-brand goods contain less salt than their branded equivalents,” she said.

RECOMMENDED DAILY SALT LEVELS

• Age 1-3 : 2g
• Age 4-6 : 3g
• Age 7-10 : 5g
• Age 11+ : 6g

“Stores are keen to help customers achieve healthier diets.

“Retailers continue to lead the way on providing clear and detailed nutritional labelling on food products to give consumers all the information they need to make the choices that are right for them.”

However Professor Graham MacGregor from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, and chairman of CASH, said they should do more.

“Unnecessary amounts of salt are still being hidden in our food,” he said.

“This puts both adults and children at risk of developing high blood pressure which causes strokes, heart attacks and heart failure, the commonest cause of death and disability in the UK.

“It is the food industry’s responsibility to take the salt out.”

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11911405

SCOTTISH surgeons have carried out a record number of organ transplants, as the number of donors across the UK shows signs of increasing.

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary revealed it had carried out 15 life-saving transplants in 15 days – compared with around six or seven it would normally expect to carry out in this time-frame.

Consultant transplant surgeon John Forsythe said deceased don ors giving organs had increased by 20 per cent in the last two years, which he said was down to increased education about transplantation.

But the NHS is keen for even more people to sign the organ donor register to increase the chances for hundreds of others currently awaiting organs.

NHS Lothian revealed that 14 patients had undergone 15 transplants in 15 days from 28 October to 11 November at the ERI’s transplant unit. All the patients were said to be doing well.

Ten patients received liver transplants, three had kidney transplants and one patient had a combined pancreas and kidney transplant.

Last year the ERI carried out 195 transplants, while 282 were completed across Scotland.

UK-wide there were 3,706 transplants in 2009/10 – up 5 per cent on the previous year.

NHS Lothian has launched a new campaign to urge even more people to sign up to the donor register to increase transplants even further.

Mr Forsythe, who is the lead clinician for organ donation in Scotland, said the 15 transplants in 15 days was a record for the transplant team at the hospital.

“This is an amazing level of activity for the Edinburgh Transplant Unit and it is very welcome news for the 14 patients who received a life-saving organ transplant,” he said.

“Thanks to the selfless generosity of organ donors, 14 individuals and all those connected to them, be it husbands, wives, sons, daughters, parents, colleagues, team-mates, will see at first hand the miracle of organ donation.”

Mr Forsythe said the number of organ donors giving organs for transplant had increased by 20 per cent across the UK.

“This is thought to be due to education and publicity programmes which have focused on the positive effect of transplantation,” he said.

“Many more people have therefore had the chance to receive a life-saving transplant.”

Mr Forsythe said while the transplants were good news, there were still about 650 Scots waiting for a transplant. On average three people die each day in the UK while waiting for an organ.

“We can all help change this,” Mr Forsythe said. “The more people we have on the register, the better the chance of saving lives. I would urge everyone to join the register today. You can join online or even by text.

It takes two minutes and you could save up to eight lives.

“Finally, I would like to thank the whole transplant team at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh who worked tirelessly over this 15-day period”.

The health board has teamed up with staff, big businesses and organisations, as well as patients to launch the Sign Up to Save a Life campaign, which is backed by families who have experience of transplantation.

source: http://news.scotsman.com/health/Scottish-surgeons-have-carried-out.6642832.jp