WASHINGTON - There could be new hope for people who need organ transplants, but can’t find a matching donor. Read the rest of this entry…
A local woman was able to donate a kidney to her sister — even though their blood types did not match.
Improving the System
Forty years ago, countless people died because doctors could not successfully perform a transplant and prevent rejection. The knowledge of immunosuppressive drugs was minimal, and the surgery involved was extremely difficult.
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Acute Rejection
The chief obstacle to living with a transplant is acute rejection. This sort of rejection would happen to nearly all recipients if it weren’t for immunosuppressive drugs. As you might expect, immunosuppressive drugs generally suppress elements of the immune system so they do not attack the donor organ. The problem with this is that the drugs also suppress some of the beneficial things the immune system does. A person taking immunosuppressive drugs is much more susceptible to infection and disease.
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Living with a New Organ
As with most other surgeries, recovery from a transplant operation involves additional medication and hospital visits to make sure the incisions heal correctly. But while other surgery patients typically can move on from the experience, most transplant recipients must continue medical treatment for the rest of their lives. This is because of the immune system’s reaction to the new organ.
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The Surgery Read the rest of this entry…
When a donor’s family authorizes the removal of organs, several surgical teams immediately begin work recovering the organ. (While the term harvesting is still in use, many organizations now prefer the term recovery because it is more sensitive to the donor family.) To understand what is involved in this procedure, let’s focus on a particularly harrowing operation: the heart transplant.
Getting on the List
To be included on the national waiting list, a patient must first find a transplant team that will treat him or her. The transplant team, a group of surgeons, nurses and other health professionals at a hospital, evaluates the patient to decide whether he or she is a good candidate for transplantation. In addition to assessing the patient’s physical condition, the team will consider the patient’s attitude, psychological state and history of drug abuse, among other factors. Donated organs are a rare and precious commodity, so doctors don’t want to proceed unless they are confident that a patient is physically and mentally prepared for the procedure, as well as life after the procedure. For the most part, patients who are unwilling to give up unhealthy drugs, including cigarettes and alcohol in many situations, will be automatically disqualified.
Today, most organ transplants are relatively safe procedures.
Sixty years ago, scientists were on the cusp of a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. In the preceding decades, researchers had had some success transplanting organs in animals, and there had even been a few failed attempts at human organ transplants. Numerous studies showed that human organ transplantation was feasible, and that it would be enormously beneficial to thousands of patients, but nobody had been able to make it work.
Success finally came in the early 1950s, when several kidney transplants within a few years gave new life to ailing patients. In the following decades, doctors learned how to transplant other organs successfully, and they dramatically improved recovery rates. Today, most organ transplants are relatively safe, routine procedures, and transplantation is considered to be the best treatment option for thousands of patients every year.
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