Join your colleagues in sharing innovative approaches to clinical practice, gaining insight into transplant finance, and expanding your leadership skills at the AST Medical Directors Forum.

Know an early-career professional or student interested in transplantation? Encourage them to check out the AST Fellows Symposium! This unique program offers expert-led sessions and valuable networking with leaders in the field. It’s a great opportunity for fellows, residents, pharmacists, nurses, and students to explore career paths in transplant and build lasting connections.

On behalf of the AST, the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT), and The Transplantation Society (TTS), we are excited to announce that registration is officially open for the International Transplantation Science Meeting 2025. 

ITS 2025 marks the fourth tri-society event in this global collaboration, bringing together top experts, early-career researchers, and transplant professionals worldwide. This meeting offers an exciting forum to explore cutting-edge basic and translational science in and beyond the field of transplantation.

The Living Donor Protection Act (LDPA) has been reintroduced in Congress, and we need your support. This bipartisan legislation would prohibit insurance discrimination against living organ donors, ensure they can use FMLA leave during recovery, and require updated educational resources to promote donation.

Take action now — urge your lawmakers to support the LDPA.

Funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) put critical transplant research at risk. NIH-funded studies have driven advancements in transplantation, improving patient outcomes and paving the way for innovations like new immunosuppressants, immune tolerance strategies, and even organ regeneration. Without this support, progress in the field could slow, affecting countless patients and families.

We need your help to ensure that transplant research remains a priority. Use our advocacy page to contact your members of Congress and urge them to protect NIH funding. Together, we can make a difference. Take action today!

The AST developed a survey aimed at soliciting your perspectives on legislative and regulatory issues that significantly influence both patient care and professional practice. Our goal is to establish a platform for our membership to share their invaluable ideas and perspectives and actively engage with the Public Policy Committee and AST leadership. We look forward to your input as we navigate the dynamics of our ever-evolving landscape of transplant care and practice.

One of the primary limiting factors in organ transplantation is limited supply of deceased donor allografts. Although there are multiple potential strategies to increase transplantation access, increasing donor organ supply remains a priority. This study aims to analyze the origins of donor supply based on donor and hospital ZIP codes.

Prior studies of donor-recipient size mismatch only included donation after brain death heart transplants. Given higher rates of primary graft dysfunction, identifying optimal graft selection factors specific to donation after circulatory death (DCD) is crucial. We assessed outcomes of size mismatch in DCD heart transplants based on predicted heart mass (PHM), height, and weight.

Seven studies met the inclusion criteria, comprising a total of 1,263 kidney transplant cases (517 RAKT and 919 OKT). Compared to OKT, the RAKT group had shorter incision length (SMD = -9.00, p < 0.001), fewer overall postoperative complications (RR = 0.52, p = 0.024), and reduced Clavien-Dindo III-IV complications (RR = 0.58, p = 0.013). However, RAKT was associated with significantly longer warm ischemia time (SMD = 0.66, p < 0.001), cold ischemia time (SMD = 0.96, p = 0.011), rewarming time (SMD = 3.08, p = 0.053), and total ischemia time (SMD = 1.73, p = 0.054).

Patients with low MELD scores remain at substantial risk for waitlist removal. We investigated modern outcomes and graft utilization for low MELD patients undergoing liver transplant(LT) in the US. Adult LT recipients with low MELD scores(match MELD≤20) from 2022-2023 were identified from the UNOS database and stratified by receipt of a donation-after-circulatory-death(DCD), donation-after-brain-death(DBD), or living donor(LD) graft.