Page 2 - LGS Today Newsletter Fall 2021

Lions Gift of Sight
TODAY
FALL 2021
Thriving on Change . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Working Together . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 EBAA...................... 4 Funeral Director Contributions . . 4 Honoring Donors. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Service from the Heart . . . . . . . . 6 Eye Donation Month . . . . . . . . . . 6 Mayo Donor Tribute. . . . . . . . . . . 7 Park Nicollet Methodist. . . . . . . . 7 Donor Spotlight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Recipient Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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Lions Gift of Sight
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2 Lions Gift of Sight
Thriving on Change
Sean Poppoff, Executive Director
Despite the curves that COVID-19 persists in throwing (and sometimes because
of them), Lions Gift of Sight continues to evolve. How many donors will be turned away because of COVID we cannot know. We do know that we absolutely must maximize dona- tions to minimize shortages in the world of eye banking and corneal transplantation.
The new buzz word is “pivot,” which to me means turning on a dime, using nimble think- ing to adapt quickly and often. Since March of 2020, I have asked my staff to pivot so many times I am surprised they haven’t developed vertigo! Yet their equilibrium is unshaken, and they continue to deliver. Thank you to my staff for embracing change and making our eye bank continually excel.
Here are some highlights from 2021:
We have added staff in donor coordination and in tissue preparation to meet the needs of additional corneal surgeon customers. Corneal transplant surgeries dipped the first half of 2020, but this aberration has faded. Tissue requests to our eye bank now exceed the level of pre-COVID times, and we needed to respond appropriately. So we welcomed three new donor coordinators, a new distribution coordinator, a new eye bank scientist, and a new research technician. We are on the cusp of hiring a supply and inventory specialist as well.
We have steadily grown our research program. Worldwide, research tissue is in short sup- ply and valued above rubies or pearls! As mentioned above, we increased our always-amaz- ing research team, and we’re adding new research clients. We are supporting the Diabetes Endothelial Keratoplasty Study (DEKS), a 5-year study led by Case Western Reserve that seeks to determine which diabetic individuals can successfully donate corneas for trans- plant. The number of persons stricken with diabetes is on the rise in this country, so the number of eye donors with diabetes is also on the rise. What is the impact of diabetes on corneal transplant success and endothelial cell loss? It is important to find out, and our eye bank is proud to contribute to this important study.
We launched a new inventory management system. A full-service eye bank works with highly-regulated supplies in its undertaking to recover, process, and distribute eye tissue. Since much of our tissue is destined for transplantation into another human being, we must know exactly which supplies played a role in every eye tissue’s journey from donor to recip- ient. We must be able to produce this information in the event of an audit, an FDA recall,
or a surgery center inquiry. The new inventory system will assist with this need. It will also help us track the life cycle of supplies from order to arrival and consumption, help us reduce waste, and monitor the servicing and maintenance of our equipment.