The World Transplant Games (WTG) are an international multi-sport event, occurring every two years, organized by the World Transplant Games Federation (WTGF). The Games promote amateur sport amongst organ transplant recipients, living donors and donor families.
Summer and winter sports alternate years and the event is open to anyone who has received a solid organ transplant including liver, heart, lung, kidney, pancreas or bone marrow. The idea is that people who receive these organs need to take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives and since such drugs affect athletic performance, the games were started to give donors a level playing field. [1]
The games started in 1978 in Portsmouth, England with about 100 athletes from the UK, France, Germany, Greece and the United States.
The 2023 games in Perth, Australia include competitors from more than 60 countries and include events over seven days such as cycling, swimming, darts, bowling and more. [2] There are ceremonies during each of the games to honor the families of the deceased and living donors. [1]
Year | Games | Host | Dates | Nations | Athletes | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1978 | 1 | Portsmouth, Great Britain | ||||
1979 | 2 | Portsmouth, Great Britain | ||||
1980 | 3 | New York City, United States | ||||
1982 | 4 | Athens, Greece | ||||
1984 | 5 | Amsterdam, Netherlands | ||||
1987 | 6 | Innsbruck, Austria | ||||
1989 | 7 | Singapore | ||||
1991 | 8 | Budapest, Hungary | ||||
1993 | 9 | Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada | ||||
1995 | 10 | Manchester, Great Britain | ||||
1997 | 11 | Sydney, Australia | ||||
1999 | 12 | Budapest, Hungary | ||||
2001 | 13 | Kobe, Japan | ||||
2003 | 14 | Nancy, France | ||||
2005 | 15 | London, Ontario, Canada | ||||
2007 | 16 | Bangkok, Thailand | ||||
2009 | 17 | Gold Coast, Australia | ||||
2011 | 18 | Gothenburg, Sweden | ||||
2013 | 19 | Durban, South Africa | [3] | |||
2015 | 20 | Mar del Plata, Argentina | 23 – 30 August | 44 | 1,110 | [4] |
2017 | 21 | Málaga, Spain | 25 June – 2 July | 52 | 2,500 | [5] |
2019 | 22 | Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, Great Britain | 17 – 23 August | 60 | 2,400 | [6] |
2021 | 23 | 5K AnyWay (2021 Games set for Houston cancelled) | Virtual | [7] | ||
2023 | 24 | Perth, Australia | 15 – 21 April | |||
2025 | 25 | Dresden, Germany | 16 – 23 August | [8] | ||
Year | Games | Host | Dates | Nations | Athletes | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1994 | 1 | Tignes, France | ||||
1996 | 2 | Pra-Loup, France | ||||
1999 | 3 | Snowbird, Utah, United States | ||||
2001 | 4 | Nendaz, Switzerland | ||||
2004 | 5 | Bormio, Italy | ||||
2008 | 6 | Rovaniemi, Finland | ||||
2010 | 7 | Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, France | ||||
2012 | 8 | Anzere, Switzerland | ||||
2014 | 9 | La Chapelle-d'Abondance, France | ||||
2016 | - | not held | [9] | |||
2018 | 10 | Anzère, Switzerland | 7–12 January | |||
2020 | 11 | Banff, Alberta, Canada | 23–28 February | [10] | ||
2022 | (Postponed) | [11] | ||||
2024 | 12 | Bormio, Italy | 3–8 March | [12] |
Summer: | Winter:
|
SPORTS – DONORS (including deceased donor families and living donors) • Road Race • 50m Freestyle • Athletics: 100m sprint, ball throw, long jump
worldtransplantgames.org/sports/
worldtransplantgames.org/sports-rules/
Seniors age groups:
Juniors age groups:
wtgf.org/results/
wtgf.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/WTWG-Medals-03-10-2020.pdf
1-CAN
2-FRA
3-USA
4-SUI
5-GBR
6-GER
7-HUN
8-ITA
9-AUT
10-NOR
11-AUS
12-POL
13-CZE
14-FIN
15-SWE
Organ donation is the process when a person authorizes an organ of their own to be removed and transplanted to another person, legally, either by consent while the donor is alive, through a legal authorization for deceased donation made prior to death, or for deceased donations through the authorization by the legal next of kin.
Organ transplantation is a medical procedure in which an organ is removed from one body and placed in the body of a recipient, to replace a damaged or missing organ. The donor and recipient may be at the same location, or organs may be transported from a donor site to another location. Organs and/or tissues that are transplanted within the same person's body are called autografts. Transplants that are recently performed between two subjects of the same species are called allografts. Allografts can either be from a living or cadaveric source.
Olympic sports are sports that are contested in the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games. The 2024 Summer Olympics included 32 sports; the 2022 Winter Olympics included seven sports. Each Olympic sport is represented at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) by an international governing body called an International Federation (IF).
Joseph Edward Murray was an American plastic surgeon who is known as the "father of transplantation" for major milestones in the field of transplantation, including performing the first successful human kidney transplant, defining brain death, the organization of the first international conference on human kidney transplants and founding of the National Kidney Registry, the forerunner of the current United Network Of Organ Sharing (UNOS). By 2013, more than one million patients are estimated to have benefitted from organ transplantation around the world.
Chris Klug is a professional alpine snowboarder. After receiving a liver transplant in 2000 to treat primary sclerosing cholangitis, he went on to compete in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, winning a bronze medal in the Parallel Giant Slalom. This was the first and so far only time a transplantee had competed in the Olympics, either winter or summer. He also won a bronze medal, and lit the torch at the 2002 National Kidney Foundation U.S. Transplant Games. He is an alumnus of Deerfield Academy.
Kidney transplant or renal transplant is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage kidney disease (ESRD). Kidney transplant is typically classified as deceased-donor or living-donor transplantation depending on the source of the donor organ. Living-donor kidney transplants are further characterized as genetically related (living-related) or non-related (living-unrelated) transplants, depending on whether a biological relationship exists between the donor and recipient. The first successful kidney transplant was performed in 1954 by a team including Joseph Murray, the recipient's surgeon, and Hartwell Harrison, surgeon for the donor. Murray was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for this and other work. In 2018, an estimated 95,479 kidney transplants were performed worldwide, 36% of which came from living donors.
A uterine transplant is a surgical procedure whereby a healthy uterus is transplanted into an organism of which the uterus is absent or diseased. As part of normal mammalian sexual reproduction, a diseased or absent uterus does not allow normal embryonic implantation, effectively rendering the female infertile. This phenomenon is known as absolute uterine factor infertility (AUFI). Uterine transplant is a potential treatment for this form of infertility.
Organ trade is the trading of human organs, tissues, or other body products, usually for transplantation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), organ trade is a commercial transplantation where there is a profit, or transplantations that occur outside of national medical systems. There is a global need or demand for healthy body parts for transplantation, which exceeds the numbers available.
Mehmet Haberal, is the founder of Başkent University in Ankara, Turkey, best known for becoming the first transplant surgeon in Turkey after leading the team that performed Turkey's first living-related kidney transplant in 1975, after he returned from surgical training under the mentorship of American surgeon Thomas Starzl, with whom he also performed some of the longest surviving early liver transplantations.
The Ontario Online Donor Registry is a website where Ontario residents, age 16 and older, can register their consent to be an organ and tissue donor. This registry was created to help ease questions and ambiguities with organ donor wishes. The virtual registry also increases Ontario donations with increased accessibility. The registration process can be done through beadonor.ca. Online donor registries have also become popular in the United States, where one can register through Donate Life America; Malaysia, registering through their National Transplant Registry; and Saudi Arabia, registering through the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation.
Robert Montgomery is the director of the Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Health.
Organ donation is when a person gives their organs after they die to someone in need of new organs. Transplantation is the process of transplanting the organs donated into another person. This process extends the life expectancy of a person suffering from organ failure. The number of patients requiring organ transplants outweighs the number of donor organs available.
The 2015 Transplant Games were a multi-sport event held from 23 to 30 August 2015 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. They were the 20th edition of the World Transplant Games.
Kaylee Davidson-Olley was the United Kingdom's first successful heart transplant baby when she received a replacement heart at less than one year of age. In 2017 she celebrated her 30th year after the transplant operation; it was her 30th year as the longest surviving heart transplant baby in Europe. The operation was performed by cardiothoracic surgeon, Christopher McGregor at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, which became one of only two UK centres performing transplants in children, and the main hospital in the UK carrying out transplants for adults born with congenital heart disease.
The 2019 Transplant Games were a multi-sport event held from 17 to 23 August 2019, in Newcastle-Gateshead, United Kingdom. They were the 22nd edition of the World Transplant Games.
The World Transplant Games Federation is a United Kingdom-based non-profit organisation that aims to promote amateur sport amongst organ transplant recipients, living donors and donor families. The WTGF promotes the study of transplantation and aims to educate the public and raise awareness of the world shortage of donor organs. It shares new knowledge from biological/clinical studies and promotes the mental and moral improvement for recipients, living donors and donor families; and fosters international friendship and relations.
Organ transplantation in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu is regulated by India's Transplantation of Human Organs Act, 1994 and is facilitated by the Transplant Authority of Tamil Nadu (TRANSTAN) of the Government of Tamil Nadu and several NGOs. Tamil Nadu ranks first in India in deceased organ donation rate at 1.8 per million population, which is seven times higher than the national average.
Organ donation in India is regulated by the Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act, 1994. The law allows both deceased and living donors to donate their organs. It also identifies brain death as a form of death. The National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (NOTTO) functions as the apex body for activities of relating to procurement, allotment and distribution of organs in the country.
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