IPTA Newsletter - March 2020
Presidential Message
Dear all,
I am hoping that after the Festive Season, 2020 has been a productive start for you and your teams. The IPTA Council started the year with a strategic planning session identifying our priorities for the next 3 years, which we will share with you shortly, in our ongoing mission to improve the care of pediatric transplantation worldwide.
Together with TTS, we are very pleased to announce that we have started combined IPTA-TTS Educational Webinars with the first webinar in November 2019 covering the topic of ‘Epitope Matching’ which was very successful. This was followed up in February by a webinar on ‘Donor Cell Free DNA Testing’. The next webinar on April 1st (12pm ET) will be our first Allied Health webinar titled: ‘Transplanting Social Media into Children’. These webinars have potential to have widespread reach to our members across the world.
We are currently updating our website as well as developing our social media profile.
We have a site visit planned for March for our current Outreach Program between a centre in Bangalore, India and Dallas, Texas.
Novel Coronavirus (Covid19) has hit headlines world-wide with particular concern for our immunosuppressed transplant patients. The TTS Section TID group have provided guidelines: https://tts.org/coronavirus.
Please also see this link from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
Finally, we encourage you and your teams to save the date for the IPTA 2021 Congress in Prague 17 – 20 April 2021.
Thanks for all you do for the children in your care. We will shortly be putting out a call for new volunteers to join our committees as some members will be rotating off and we are very grateful for the work that they have done.
This does however provide opportunities for new volunteers, so please consider making a difference and joining our team.
Best wishes
Mignon McCulloch
IPTA President
Education Committee Update
Dear IPTA Colleagues,
This is an exciting time for the Education Committee. We have several new initiatives that we feel help us achieve the mission of the committee - to provide leadership in transplant education at all levels of training and expertise. We are proud to announce the first Joint TTS-IPTA Webinar Series on Pediatric Transplantation, and we recently completed the first TTS/IPTA educational webinar on epitope matching given by Medhat Askar (TTS) and Katherine Twombley (IPTA). We know that there are members of IPTA all over the globe and not everyone can attend the webinar live, so we have it available on the IPTA website under educational resources (https://www.tts.org/ipta-education/ipta-webinars). A webinar on Donor Cell Free DNA Testing followed in February, with the discussion led by Dr Stanley Jordan and Dr Daniel Brennan, moderated by Medhat Askar (TTS). The link is available here. Please note that you need to be logged in to the TTS website in order to access this link.
Our next webinar will be given on behalf of the Allied Health Committee in on 1st April (time tbc), with the tentative title ‘Transplanting Social Media into Children’. We hope you can join us. Feel free to email the education committee chair with ideas for future webinar ideas (twombley@musc.edu).
In keeping with our goal of developing educational resources for IPTA membership, our next initiative that we would like to announce is the IPTA Question Bank. This resource is available online (https://www.tts.org/ipta-education/ipta-resources?id=144 ) to all members. It is a great tool to not only stay up to date on current transplant topics, but you can also use it as a teaching tool for students, residents and fellows. Each question has a detailed answer and is accompanied by references if you would like further reading. We add new questions to the bank every quarter so come back and view often.
Another goal of the education committee is to support of educational activities at scientific meetings. IPTA 2019 was amazing and the SAC is well underway planning IPTA 2021. But did you know that there are other meetings where you can go to IPTA sessions? We are actively planning the pediatric sessions sponsored by IPTA at TTS in Seoul, Korea. This meeting will be in September and IPTA has a pre-congress symposium as well as state of the art talks planned. We hope you will join us in Seoul, Korea on September 12th-16th.
We hope that you take advantage of all of the resources that IPTA has to offer and the education committee will continue to work hard for membership to provide the most up to date, educational materials.
Pediatric Transplantation Journal Update
This is a list of the 10 most down-loaded papers for PETR in 2019. However, it should be noted that the meaning of this data is relative; a paper published in December 2019 has one month to be downloaded, while a paper from Jan 2019 issue has 12 months.
Article DOI |
Article Title |
FTDs |
First Published |
|---|---|---|---|
10.1111/petr.13385 |
European Society of Pediatric Nephrology survey on current practice regarding recurrent focal segmental glomerulosclerosis after pediatric kidney transplantation. Antonia Bouts et al. |
1058 |
March |
10.1111/petr.13328 |
Pharmacokinetics of tacrolimus granules in pediatric de novo liver, kidney, and heart transplantation: The OPTION study.Nicholas J.A. Webb et al. |
1048 |
Jan |
10.1111/petr.13571 |
Live vaccines after pediatric solid organ transplant: Proceedings of a consensus meeting, 2018. Sneha Suresh, et al. |
741 |
Sept |
10.1111/petr.13338 |
Evaluation of the current post‐transplantation Human Leukocyte Antigen antibody screening in pediatric renal transplant recipients. Aysenur Demirok, et al. |
660 |
Jan |
10.1111/petr.13387 |
Pressure gradients, laboratory changes, and outcomes with transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts in pediatric portal hypertension. Voytek Slowik, et al. |
580 |
Apr |
10.1111/petr.13391 |
Comparative pharmacokinetics of tacrolimus in stable pediatric allograft recipients converted from immediate‐release tacrolimus to prolonged‐release tacrolimus formulation. Jasej Rubik, et al. |
562 |
Apr |
10.1111/petr.13362 |
First report of successful transplantation of a pediatric donor liver graft after hypothermic machine perfusion. Maureen J.M.Werner, et al. |
470 |
Feb |
10.1111/petr.13357 |
Various initial presentations of Epstein‐Barr virus infection‐associated post‐transplant lymphoproliferative disorder in pediatric liver transplantation recipients: Case series and literature review. Lila Simakachorn, et al. |
462 |
Jan |
10.1111/petr.13326 |
Single kidney transplantation from donors with acute kidney injury: A single‐center experience. Yamei Jiang, et al. |
433 |
Feb |
10.1111/petr.13465 |
Physical activity and aerobic fitness in children after liver transplantation. G.J.Fjoyce Bos, et al. |
418 |
Jun |
Spotlight
Introduction
Dr. Vikas R. Dharnidharka, MD, MPH, Professor and Chief Division of Pediatric Nephrology Washington University School of Medicine & St. Louis Children’s Hospital, brings us an Introduction of the new Communications Committee for the IPTA membership he chairs.
The New IPTA Communications Committee
In 2019, IPTA President Mignon McCulloch initiated a new Communications Committee for IPTA. The purpose of this Committee is to enhance the electronic and social media communications from IPTA and improve the society’s visibility, using the channels that have transformed how individuals communicate with each other. Dr. McCulloch appointed Dr. Vikas Dharnidharka as the first chair of this new Committee. Note that the IPTA Newsletter is still handled by the IPTA Publications Committee.
The Communications Committee held its first meeting at the IPTA meeting in Vancouver in May 2019. Present were IPTA President Dr. McCulloch, President-Elect Dr. Esquivel, Dr. Dharnidharka, and initial committee member Srinath Chinnakotla and Sondra Livingston and Katie Tait (TTS administration). At this meeting, the Committee’s charge and initial steps were reviewed and adopted.
The Committee has since added more members and completed several important steps. The IPTA Twitter account was set up and went live in October 2019 - the handle is @IPTAPedsTx.
The IPTA Twitter account already has 119 followers! This Twitter page will be used for promoting important IPTA announcements and policies and publicizing key issues of importance to IPTA. We encourage all IPTA members who are on Twitter to follow our IPTA Twitter handle. Note that the IPTA journal Pediatric Transplantation has its own handle @pedtransjrnl. The two accounts follow each other but the journal account is handled by the publisher Wiley.
The Communications Committee also helped review the IPTA website redesign and suggested some alterations.
A Facebook page has been created and will go live shortly. The Communications Committee will address other social media channels at a later time, if and when appropriate.
Current IPTA Communications Committee members include Dr Carlos Esquivel, Dr Srinath Chinnakotla, Dr Shawn West and Dr Allison Carroll. We are actively looking to recruit more Committee members. If you are interested in joining the Communications Committee, please contact Katie Tait at the TTS office katie.tait@tts.org.
To allow the office bearers, IPTA administrators and key Communications Committee members to post on IPTA social media accounts on behalf of the society, our Committee’s latest charge is to develop a Social Media Policy. A draft document has been created and is currently under review. We look forward to an exciting year ahead!
With many thanks
Vikas Dharnidharka
Chair, IPTA Communications Committee
Survey
Dear Potential Participant:
As a practicing pediatric gastroenterologist/hepatologist or transplant surgeon you are invited to participate in an anonymous survey. The objective of our study is to evaluate “increased risk” donor livers (increased risk for recent HIV, HBV, and HCV infections) as an option for transplant into pediatric candidates. The goal of the study is to better understanding why or why not “increased risk” donor livers are accepted/rejected in these patients. We would like to collect your perspective and experience with increased risk liver donations and pediatric candidates. We ask that you consider completing this anonymous online survey, which will take approximately 10 minutes of your time. Please make use of the spaces for comments to provide reflections on your experience and opinions on this matter. Your participation in this survey is completely voluntary. Please only complete the survey once, even if you receive a second request. This project has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (IRB # 016-20-EX).
Thank-you in advance for your time! If you have any questions or concerns you are welcome to contact us (information below).
Sincerely,
Dr. Blaire Anderson
Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellow
University of Nebraska Medical Center
blaire.anderson@unmc.edu
402-599-0265
Dr. Nathalie Sela
Abdominal Transplant Surgery Fellow
University of Nebraska Medical Center
nathalie.sela@unmc.edu
402-650-4982
Dr. Arika Hoffman
Assistant Professor
University of Nebraska Medical Center
arika.hoffman@unmc.edu
402-559-3434
IPTA 2021
An exciting and full Scientific Program is currently being put together for the 11th Congress of IPTA, which will be held in Prague on April 17-20, 2021. Please save the date and make sure to tell all your contacts! Registrations will go live in due course. Watch this space for more information.
If you are interested in becoming a sponsor of this meeting, please contact Isabel Stengler (TTS) at Isabel.stengler@tts.org.
TTS Announcements
We are delighted to confirm that IPTA will have a presence at the 28th International Congress of The Transplantation Society, September 12-16 2020, in Seoul, South Korea.
Our programming will include a pre-Congress session on September 13th from 8am-3pm, 1 SOTA, 1 EMW, and abstract sessions. We will publish more information on this event closer to the time.
Contact
Address
International Pediatric Transplant Association
c/o The Transplantation Society
740 Notre-Dame Ouest
Suite 1245
Montréal, QC, H3C 3X6
Canada