Oh, and welcome to the gifted life podcast where we have those conversations about organ tissue and eye donation. I'm Lori Steele. And I'm Joey Buudrow. And we appreciate you taking the time to listen and we appreciate you spreading the word about donation and Joey, you are surprised because this is a family thing for you.
Yeah, well, we're glad to have you guys listening in as usual and I got a surprise phone call from one of my cousins and he told me, hey man, you know, I've been listening to the podcast and enjoy what you guys are doing. And I would like to have you come out to my event that I'm putting on next weekend to tell a little bit more about what you guys are talking about on your podcast. Wow. It's awesome.
It's exciting. I heard a little bit of a Acadian accent there from you as well when you're talking about your face. That happens to me too. That's right.
So we love that. Thank you to Joey's cousin and thanks to all of you who helped us spread the word because we try to make it as easy as possible to find us. Absolutely. You can find us anywhere on iTunes or whatever your favorite podcast app might be.
Yeah, and you can follow up on Facebook. We post a lot of pictures of stuff that we talk about here on the podcast. So that's Donate Life Louisiana and Twitter and Instagram. You can find us at Donate Life LA.
We just try to put as much information out as possible so that you can have the facts, make an educated decision and we'll be bringing you some more information today. First of all, some great new details about breakthroughs for tissue donation. You won't want to miss it. Absolutely.
In our community segment, we'll be talking about National Donate Sabbath Weekend. And we'll honor a hero and her family continues to pay it forward so there's a cheer and dance competition coming up. We'll fill you in and we'll take your questions and answers here on the Gifted Life. We have reached our Recovery segment here on the Gifted Life podcast.
I'm excited because I think we're all going to learn a little something from this. We're kind of delving into the world of tissue and some of the new things that we are able to do. Our CEO, Kelly Rannam, was out at one of these conferences and got to hear this guy, Kent Baca, speak. And she was just intrigued and she said, we need to share this information.
So he's here on the podcast to tell us all this good news. Absolutely. Absolutely. As you know, Laurie, I'm the chief clinical officer and I oversee the organ side of Lopin.
It's always very interesting to me to hear more information about the tissue side. And we are fortunate enough to have the Vice President of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery franchise at LifeNet. Kent Baca, how are you doing? I'm very well, Joey.
Thank you. Hey, it's very exciting that you're here. And I've kind of heard and noticed over the past few years, there's been such an increase in the need in skin recovery. And we've seen our skin donors go up significantly over the past few years.
So can you tell me a little bit about what you guys have been focusing on recently at LifeNet? Happy to, Joey. And it's not a coincidence when you say you've seen recovery go up when I start to talk about what we're focusing on because we're seeing an urgent and growing need in these areas. So our areas of focus are chronic wound management.
So that's things like diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers. So very, very challenging conditions to treat. And then our other area of focus is breast reconstruction post-nusceptomy. So women who've had breast cancer and have had an mastectomy and need a reconstructed breast.
So obviously both of those areas are very large and growing areas. And to just give you a brief bit of fact, seductive areas, if you look at chronic wound management, the number of people in the United States that are affected by diabetes is growing dramatically and we're well over 25 million people in this country right now. Diabetes is one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. And unfortunately worldwide, 70% of all leg amputations occur in diabetic patients and really the result of these diabetic little ulcers that just continue to erode and don't heal and ultimately lead to an amputation.
And beyond just the issue of amputation, this is a very, very, very significant health risk in this country. If you have a diabetic foot ulcer, you are likely in 50% of the cases to have had an amputation within five years. And if you have an amputation within five years, 50% of those patients are likely to pass away within five more years of that initial amputation. This is a huge health risk.
And currently the U.S. health care system spends more than $500 million annually on diabetes management. Rest reconstruction post-mosectomy is also a significant health challenge in this country. In fact, right now roughly a quarter of a million new cases are diagnosed annually and of those cases roughly 180,000 mastectomies are performed annually.
And once you've had an mastectomy, then you can go ahead and get your reconstruction. And so growing need for mastectomy has led to the growing changes in breast reconstruction techniques. And we'll talk about that further as we go along. But I also want to mention one other thing about breast reconstruction to make sure your audience is aware of this.
And breast reconstruction has special legal status in the United States. Regardless of your ability to pay, regardless of your insurance, you are guaranteed a breast reconstruction in this country. So that gives you a sense for how significant a societal issue this is as well. That's amazing.
And going back to the diabetes, I was an emergency room nurse for years and I worked on the floors for years. And it seemed like the largest portion of our population were diabetics and seeing these patients struggle with so many infections they would have. They would start getting a diabetic ulcer on one of their limbs and before you know it was one infection after the other. And it is amazing that you guys are making such an impact on this part of the medical society.
Well, Joey, thank you for your comment because you're absolutely right. That's what's led to this issue is that those adulters that you had saw clinically that grow and grow and grow, because those patients have decreased sensitivity with the diabetic neuropathy and the nerve pain that goes with that and increase in nerve sensation, they frequently don't realize they have those ulcers until it's almost too late to treat that. And so our goal is not only to treat and rectify those ulcers, but to provide the education that will help people understand the seriousness of this condition and know what to do to take care of themselves so they don't get in a better situation. And let's talk about some of the changing techniques when it comes to breast reconstruction.
You mentioned that, the need for larger grass and how you guys handle the need. Sure. Yeah, that's a great question, Laurie. And what's happened over the years, let's go back a few years in breast reconstruction.
What typically used to happen after a mastectomy is that a woman's breast was reconstructed with her own tissue. So it was called an autologous breast reconstruction. It was frequently done with stomach tissue or leg tissue or tissue from the back of buttocks and it would allow the surgeon to reconstruct the breast for the patient after mastectomy. That obviously when you're taking tissue from another site on the body, you're creating a secondary wound.
And so that was challenging from a healing perspective for patients. And it's also challenging when you're still in the middle potentially of your chemotherapy and your radiation therapy. So what happened over time is there was a desire to move towards a implant-based reconstruction that wouldn't necessitate a secondary wound creation to harvest tissue for the breast mat. And so when that started happening, what we started to see is certainly taking a breast implant, a pectoralis major muscle for the patient and using that muscle to hold the implant in place.
And while that created some nice outcomes for the patients, it put some challenges physiologically on that patient because as you can imagine, when you take a muscle and you insert something like an implant underneath the muscle, it's going to be very snug, which will hold it in place. But the sheer act of putting it there and having that snug tight fit had led to some pain and discomfort for the patients, lost the range of motion, and frankly, a loss of the more aesthetic looking breast-mounted after the reconstruction. So over time, what happened is surgeon started to realize that these donated human tissues could be just a piece of tissue they needed to extend that muscle and put the implant in under a little less pressure, where if you have a little less pressure and you've had to elevate the pack a little bit less, which means your range of motion is compromised and the breast mount looks more normal. That has led to a dramatic change in outcomes and dramatic change in the techniques that we seen.
And that happened over the course of about, let's say, 12 to 14 years from 2001 to right about now. And what's evolving now is a further change in technique. And what we're seeing is surgeon using an even larger piece of donated human tissue, wrapping the implant in that tissue and applying it directly into the mastectomy without having it elevate the muscle at all. And what that allows the patients to do is to recover a little faster and not have any compromise of their range of motion or their quality of life or activities of daily living, while at the same time getting a very, very elegant and cosmetic looking outcome from this reconstruction in a single operation.
And that single operation is also critical because that has impacts to the overall healthcare system. In the example I described previously, that implant was done in two stages. You would put a tissue expander in to stretch the skin and then go back and cook the final entire. But if you don't need to stretch that skin out, you can go directly to the implant and changing this reconstruction to a single procedure versus a multiple stage procedure approach has cost implications for healthcare system.
And so it's a very positive outcome from the overall cost of healthcare as well. It sounds like, and you guys are making such a huge imprint here, are there anything that you guys are doing from a strategic standpoint to make sure that there's enough tissue out there to make sure that we are maximizing each gift? That's a great question. We spend a lot of time in our planning and distribution meetings to ensure that we are identifying the need and contacting our recovery partners to help us procure this wonderful gift of life for our patients.
And so we spend an awful lot of time in that area and we feel like we've got the right recovery partners and the right process to ensure that our patients are not going to be wanting for tissue as we go forward. And I'm just blown away by all this information, which is amazing. So thanks for taking the time to tell us. I was just in a presentation and we had a organ recipient up front.
And one of the questions that the kids had was, do you have to take medication? And of course, the recipient said, yes, I'm on anti-rejection medications. And so I guess I'm just thinking, do our tissue recipients have to take anti-rejection medication as well? You know, we've talked about all these, the help from the tissue.
I was just wondering. Well, that's a great question. Unfortunately, they do not. Our tissue is completely decelerized and beyond taking the cellular remnants out and further remove virtually all of the DNA.
We have a validated process to ensure that greater than 97% of all the DNA is removed from each of the donated grass. And our tissue is then terminally sterilized at the same level of sterility that a medical device would be sterilized. So anything that would be used in the operating room. And by doing that, by decelerizing the tissue and eliminating the DNA, we basically had eliminated the body's rejection approach.
In other words, the body doesn't see this dermis as a foreign body. And so it does not try to reject the tissue. So the recovery time is very minimal and there's really no long term issues with the tissue at all. Wow.
My goodness. We all learned a lot here today. Mr. Kent Baucus with LifeNet.
Thank you so much. My pleasure, Lori. Thank you, Joy. We're going to go to info at lopa.org and we will get with Mr.
Kent and get you the answers that you need. Okay, Joey, in the community, I'm coming up actually this weekend, National Donor Sabbath. So for those of you who haven't heard of National Donor Sabbath, it's observed annually on the Friday through Sunday, two weekends before Thanksgiving. So kind of easy to remember.
But it's a three day observance to talk about donation through the major religion sectors. Right. And one of those myths, Lori, that we busted quite some time back on one of the podcasts was, does my religion support donation? And the fact of the matter is, is that all major religions support donation, they feel that it's an active charity.
Yeah. And we see that again and again, and this is just a way that we increase awareness through different means through the churches, primarily, for example, to tell you what's going on at Open Door Fellowship in Spring Hill, Louisiana at a 1030 service. It's being dedicated to a donor named Alan Fish grew up in that community. So the congregation will hear about this hero.
They'll learn about his story and about his gifts. So that's happening on the 15th at that service. We also get invited into the Bible study classes before the services so that we can talk in depth. We bring recipients of donor family members to talk about donation.
So we are offered before the services and after the services to kind of hang out in the lobby areas and hand out some facts, talk to these folks, shake hands so that we can just spread the word about donation. And what's really great is we came across a youth pastor at one of the health fairs that I went to and ran up to my table, grabbed our donate life fan and said, I am already signed up and we need to tell people. And I said, I'm following you right here. And this is just a time during the year that we set aside to do this through the churches.
So we appreciate those who who jump on board, who want to do it. And it's really a good setting to learn more. Absolutely. And it doesn't just have to be though this time.
I know we've got it set aside for the weekend, but we have some areas that allow us in pretty much all month, you know, throughout the month of November. And it doesn't even have to be the month of November. We're available anytime if there are any pastors out there that would like for us to come and talk or have a donor family or a recipient. We're always willing and we want to come and spread the word about donation.
Yeah. And so maybe you attend church and say, Hey, I think that we should have a recipient come and address this or a donor family member. We can help you set that up. So if you got a Loba.org slash speaker, you can request something like that where you are.
So send that to us. Remember that info at Loba.org will be happy to help. At this point in the podcast, we do want to take the time to honor a hero, someone who gave life to others. And we know this precious girl's story, her family, their big advocates for donation, they're always with us.
They're part of our family now. But we are talking about Lacey Tequino. I love her story because she was a registered organ donor and she made her mom talk about it. So when her mom tells her story, she says she was actually the adult in this situation.
I didn't sign up till had kids, but she made me talk about donation because that's just who she was. And then the conversation was July 13th, okay, on August 12th, that same year. So about a month later, she suffered a brain bleed. Right.
Well, she was just, of course, getting started with school and she was doing some things with cheerleading. And her mom on that day, her mom said something made me take a picture of her, you know, and she had a few of her friends around. And you know, of course, that was the last picture that she would take. And she's told the story many times.
It's very resounding. You know, a little bit later, Lacey developed a headache. She suffered an AV malformation, which is a genetic problem with the vessels that makes it very easily to have an intracranial hemorrhage or stroke, something that was never detected before and never gave her any problems. And of course, it was very sudden.
So he rushed her into the emergency room, even with the heroic measures of the physicians and the nurses that they weren't able to save her. And she was declared brain dead on August 14th, 2006. And of course, as in all cases like this, her mom was talked to and asked if she wanted to donate. She remembered that conversation that they had before, you know, just a few months earlier that Lacey told her this is something that we needed to do.
Just an incredible story. Love this family. Mom, Lisa, Sister, Lexi, and Dad, Chad all continue to talk about Lacey and her gifts. As a matter of fact, back in January, we talked about this on a previous podcast, but Lacey was honored in a floor graph form during the Rose Parade on the donate life float.
And they were able to go the family and experience that there. And you got to see them come back home. Well, I got to see them even before when they saw the floor graphs for the first time, they were allowed to do the last parts of the decorations. And that's where they kind of put in the little eyebrows and things like that.
And it was, this was at Lafayette General. It was such a touching event for everyone. It was such a large crowd that came down when they found out what was going on. It was so touching.
It was an amazing event. So, Lisa and Lexi, especially, um, speak at schools, they tell the story of Lacey Ticino. And one of the things that they did to honor her, um, because Lacey was a cheerleader. She was a dancer.
So she always had that big smile on her face, but they host the Lacey Ticino Dance for a life cheer and dance competition. So this year, nine years later, nine years after her death, they are hosting this for the third time. And it's going to be at Komal High School on November 14th. So it's a great day.
It's a long day. It's a day of honoring Lacey and experiencing what she loved to do. So if you got a lopa.org, you can learn more about the Lacey Ticino Dance for a Life competition. Um, you can also, while you're there, check out our Faces of Domation.
So you can see Sweet Lacey's face and read her story that Mom wrote. You know, it's just a time that we all say, thank you to these donors. Um, at this point in this podcast though, we do want to pause and we want to say thank you to Lacey Ticino for the gift of life. All right, let's tackle a question here on the get to life podcast.
One coming in and one that we normally get out in the community a lot, especially from high school folks, just curious if I have cancer, can I still be an organ donor? Well, that's a great question. Well, the truth of the matter is yes, you can still be a donor and I'll kind of break it down real briefly into organ and eye donation. For organ donation, there are some cancers that are active cancer that will still allow you to be a donor, an organ donor, like certain skin cancers or there are certain cancers that if the cancer is just encapsulated and it hadn't spread, then it doesn't really affect the organs.
And in others that if you've been in remission for long enough, then you'd certainly be able to still become an organ donor. So we want to encourage you definitely to continue signing up and don't rule yourself out. Yes. In eye donation, Lori, you can still, they take most active cancers.
So as a matter of fact, a lot of their patients come from hospice, you know, so it's really not a big issue for eye donation. So you can actually give sight to two different people and have active cancer right now. So don't rule yourself out. You can absolutely become an organ or an eye donor in certain situations.
So the long answer to a short question is yes. Happy you covered it. If you have more info at lopa.org. Joey, another episode has come to a close here on the gifted life.
We certainly appreciate everyone who joins us on the podcast and those who listen today. We learned a lot. Yeah, Lori, we want to thank Kent Bacchus, the vice president of plastic and reconstructive surgery franchise for LifeNet Health. He was, he was so interesting, you know, it was very interesting on learning about how tissue is impacting diabetes and ulcers and then of course also breast reconstructions with breast cancer.
Yeah. I always say, this is what we are doing today. We never know what will happen tomorrow. We just learned what can happen.
You know, if you, if you wait a little bit and all the powers that become together, it's just amazing, amazing. I also want to remind you about National Donor Sabbath weekend. So in the churches, in those Bible studies, you'll probably be hearing about donation, share your story, share what you know. And also the Lacey Tequino Cheer and Dance Competition in Lafayette is happening this weekend as well.
We have all information at lopa.org and if there was something that we talked about, you want more information or you have a question that we didn't cover today, info at lopa.org. We want to thank you for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. Thanks for helping to make life happen.
We appreciate you listening here on the gifted life. Good life.