This week Johns Hopkins Medicine announced that a multidisciplinary team recently performed the world’s first-ever HIV-to-HIV liver transplant, and the United States’ first-ever HIV-to-HIV kidney transplant.
Members of the medical team spoke about these landmark surgeries at a press conference streamed live via Mediasite. Watch it here.
“This is an unbelievably exciting day for our hospital and our team, but more importantly for patients living with both HIV and end-stage organ disease. For these individuals, this could mean a new chance at life,” says Dorry L. Segev, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Reporters asked their questions via Mediasite, and the announcement was covered by every major news organization in the U.S. and around the world.
Viewers of the press conference learned that approximately 122,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the United States at any one time. Thousands die each year, many of whom might have lived had they gotten the organ they needed. Meanwhile, Segev estimates that each year, about 500 to 600 HIV-positive would-be organ donors die. Their organs could have saved more than 1,000 people if the medical community was allowed to use the organs for transplant.
Johns Hopkins has been a Mediasite customer for more than a decade, streaming medical training and education, grand rounds and more.