Christine Bruce, Senior Director of Laboratory Medicine @UHN has published a love letter in the form of a cookbook. Brimming with joyful images, heartwarming stories and favourite recipes, Joy will inspire you to reflect on your connection to food, family and friendship. Proceeds from sales of Joy will go to support transplant services at UHN. To order visit bit.ly/JOYcookbook.

It took a lot of work from the pharmacy team, patient partners and many others but the wait was worth it! The new Transplant Medication Information Education Tool has everything patients and caregivers need, including information on drugs typically prescribed and what they do, side effects, and how to manage medication safely and effectively at home. The About section includes links to the Transplant Outpatient Pharmacy and the Patient Toolbox which contains useful information on drug coverage for Ontario and out-of-province residents. 

In October, the Centre for Living Organ Donation hosted a webinar on Medications & Drug Coverage featuring pharmacist, Dipika Munyal and reimbursement specialist, Lucia Angelache. To view, visit bit.ly/givelifeuhnYT. 

Dipika and Lucia were also guests on episode 9 of The Green Table Talk, a regular series on the newly launched ACB Organ Health YouTube Channel, and answered questions submitted by transplant patients and caregivers.  

Living Kidney Donor Enhanced Recovery after Surgery (ERAS-LDKT), the focus of winning project at Inaugural Ajmera Transplant Centre QI Grant Competition

Despite the significant body of evidence indicating that protocols to enhance recovery after surgery lead to improved outcomes, implementation in transplantation has been slow. Dr Sonia Rodriguez-Ramirez and Dr Joseph Kim will develop, deploy, and evaluate an ERAS protocol for living donor kidney transplant patients at UHN, with the goal of safely reducing hospital length-of-stay while maintaining similar or lower morbidity and increasing patient satisfaction. Due to the scheduled nature of the procedure they will initially focus on living donor kidney transplant, but will consider expanding to deceased donor kidney transplant in the future.

Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) pathways aim to minimize perioperative physiologic dysfunction and surgical stress, and promote quicker rehabilitation. The key elements of ERAS protocols include preoperative counselling, optimization of nutrition, short-acting anesthetics, effective opioid-sparing post-operative pain and nausea control, avoiding unnecessary invasive monitoring, early mobilization, and oral nutrition.