ISCN 2019 Speaker Highlight: Dr. Sanjay Kulkarni

When individuals have faulty organ systems due to disease and trauma, there is a neurological consequence. Individuals can develop hepatic or renal encephalopathies and most people with organ failure have these co-morbidities. Dr. Sanjay Kulkarni is the head of Yale University’s transplant surgical team and has developed a living donor program to save lives and counter the inability to obtain adequate transplant materials for individuals who are suffering from these conditions. Dr. Kulkarni will be talking about this program which will maximize the ability to receive transplant organs and save these individual’s lives. Once these lives are saved, we must address the consequences of the encephalopathy and the brain damage that can occur after years and years of organ failure. #carricktrained #carrickinstitute #ISCN2019 #neuroscience #neurology #organtransplant Transcription: – Hello, my name is Dr. Freddy Garcia, today we’re joined by Dr. Kulkarni. Dr. Kulkarni, how you doing today? – I’m doing great, how are you? – I’m doing great. I wanted to grab you on video really quick, ’cause you are joining us a presenter for the 2019 International Symposium on Clinical Neuroscience on May 24th through 26th in Orlando, Florida, and we can’t wait to see you there. – I’m excited to attend. – Awesome! You may be new to some of our scholars, so I wanted to ask you if you would tell us a little bit about yourself. – Well, I am the transplant surgeon at Yale University. My title is the Director of Kidney Transplantation, and I’m also the medical director of something we call The Center for Living Organ Donors. – That’s pretty impressive. The next thing I wanted to ask you was what your topic was. Now, I know your topic, your topic is Evolving Transplant Biases to Patient-Centered Decision-Making Utilizing Choice Architecture. Why did you choose that topic and why is it important to you? – Well, there are a lot of behavioral economic theories that are pretty well-established, but they haven’t really been applied to the field of transplantation. And, so, what I’m trying to do is trying to find new ways that we can ethically expand living donation and the idea is using these established behavioral economic principles to gently influence individuals to learn more about living donation. – And how much is the need for donations nowadays, if I could ask? – We’re really in a public health crisis for individuals in need of a kidney transplant. Every single day, 22 people die waiting for an organ transplant. Not many people realize that deceased donation hasn’t really kept up with the demand, so individuals are waiting five, six, seven years, and many of them are dying while waiting for a kidney transplant. So, we really think that the safe and ethical expansion of living donation can fix this health crisis. – Wow. Certainly an important topic. Well, we’re excited to be having you join us, again, you’re gonna be speaking and presenting at the 2019 International Symposium on Clinical Neuroscience May 24th through 26th in Orlando, Florida. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Kulkarni, and we can’t wait to see you there. Thank you. – Thank you, look forward to it.