Organ Donation Awareness Campaign

Organ Donation Awareness Campaign

Sentinel Diagnostics is a company specialized in the development and production of In Vitro Diagnostics reagents with a long and proud history in development and manufacturing.

We believe in Research, Quality, and in the continuous improvement of our diagnostic tests aware of the knowledge that our products can improve people’s lives.

On Organ Donation Awareness Week, we want to express our support for this sensitive topic by holding up heightened awareness about the delicate post-transplant moment.

Unfortunately, even though the number of donors is growing every year, the list of applicants is still very long, sometimes with waiting times of years. After the waiting phase, a long profiling of checks aimed at the intervention opens for the recipient, and after this another of monitoring.

Life expectancies for solid organ recipients and graft survival rates for these patients have improved over the years thanks to advanced immunosuppressive therapies, but the chronic use of immunosuppressants reduces the ability of the immune system to fight infections. Therefore, recipients are exposed to a higher risk of developing them and becomes one of the main causes of morbidity for them.

The long waiting period for a transplant attendant is rich in stress both for the recipient and his family. The transplantation means the beginning of a new life and it’s very important to preserve the organ from every cause of infection to ensure longer survival after surgery. Infections are the leading cause of death within 1 year after transplantation, especially for heart and lung transplants.

The infections that can occur in transplant recipients include all the conditions that could happen in any person during the postoperative period beyond the risk of unusual (opportunistic) infections that mainly affect people with a weakened immune system. Opportunistic infections can be caused by:

  • Bacteria
  • Virus
  • Mycetes
  • Parasite

Times of appearance of the main infections in transplanted subjects can be identified with a timeline, dividing three different phases: post-surgical (< 4 weeks), Maximum immune suppression period (1 year), and late-onset (> 12 months).

For all those reasons, we considered it essential to invest in research and development to support the long phase of organ transplant monitoring, designing and offering the best possible molecular diagnostics solutions.