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Last updated:10-15-2008
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Operations which will replace diseased organs with healthy performed nowadays routinely. Each year, performed several thousand such operations around the world. Bodies such transplants taken either from people who before their death has given their consent to organs and tissues from their bodies may be used for transplants, or if the deceased's relatives give their consent after death. Bodies which appear in pairs (eg. Kidneys) can also be taken from living entities, as in

In Scandinavia operates the major hospitals in a joint organization called Scandiatransplant, which stores information on the type of tissue of a patient who needs a particular body. Once you get to dispose of a body can help with your computer quickly find an appropriate recipient, arrange transportation of the body and establish the operation.

Speed is incredibly important to the success of a transplant. A kidney, for example, taken from the donor's body within 30 minutes after his death and can only be stored for a limited number of hours before the transplant to be performed.

What are the difficulties?


Modern operating methods and technical means implies that the surgery does not pose a major problem. The problem consists in the earliest that the body's immune system reacts against the transplanted tissue as though it were a foreign element that must be fought. Immune defense is linked to white blood cells that form antibodies against disease-causing bacteria as well as other foreign elements.

The ideal conditions at a transplant, the recipient and donor's type of tissue is exactly the same. This situation exists only in enæggede twins, while in other cases may inhibit the recipient's immune system through a so-called immunosuppression, which is that the number of white blood cells decreases. An exception is corneal transplants (see Hornhindesår and infections), because the cornea has no blood supply and thus not considered as a foreign organ of the body.

To avoid rejection, we must therefore treat the patient with an agent, which inhibits the immune system, which has some unfortunate side effects. Today is the most important immunosuppressive agent cyclosporin, but research is always to seek out even more efficient and secure means. It has also developed options for storing and transporting organs, which also has improved the prognosis. Despite the fact that the public increasingly has been understanding of the need for organ

Forecast


Treatment with cyclosporin, cortisone preparations and other modern medicines to lower the body's immune system, deployed immediately after the surgery and must continue the rest of the patient's life. In spite of that treatment has serious side effects, you can live a reasonable life.

The chances of survival more than two years after an organ transplant, increasing all the time. Today you have a higher survival rate after a transplant than if they were operated on for lung or bowel cancer. About 90% of those who have undergone a heart transplant are alive after one year, and 80% living after two years. Many patients who have received a new kidney or liver, has had difficulty keeping the body, making it necessary to repeat the operation.

Kidney


With the help of advanced medical and surgical techniques are kidney transplants today have become increasingly common. They are less risky than other transplants since Monday in case the agency rejection, can keep patients alive through dialysis. It now performs more kidney transplants in order to improve the quality of life than to save patient's lives. Of those who have undergone a transplant is 2 / 3 alive with functioning kidneys two years after surgery. In a 1 / 6 of the operating

Pancreas transplantation


When we carry out a kidney transplant on a patient with diabetes, it has become increasingly common, while simultaneously replacing the patient's pancreas. Although this form of transplantation is not as safe as kidney, there is a chance that the patient can be free from having to take injections of insulin. If surgery is successful, it also reduces the risk that the nytransplanterede kidney is enlarged as a result of diabetes change. Only to implement a bugsp

Heart transplantation


Since it has not yet been able to replace the heart with a machine (the mechanical hearts as there is still the experimental stage and are not sufficiently developed to be a reasonable alternative to biological hearts), offers the only heart transplant when the patient's heart is so bad that there is a risk that the patient dies within a very short time.

Thanks to great technological progress is the method, however, become increasingly common and is now used also to treat severe heart failure after a myocardial infarction and by enlargement of the heart (cardiomyopathy). Heart transplantation is a successful method of treatment. About 80% of operating are still alive five years after surgery.

Heart-lung transplant


To conduct a combined heart-lung transplantation leads to many problems. The biggest is the lack of donors with functioning lungs. Lung change occurs very quickly after death, and since it is difficult to keep the heart and lungs as a unit, the donor is located near the hospital where the recipient is located, so the transplant can be implemented immediately.

A few patients with serious lung diseases such as. cystic fibrosis, is a double lung transplant is the only hope of survival. Some patients with a combined heart and lung disease as a result of the high pressure in the pulmonary circulation, can offer a cardiovascular and a double lung transplant. In some diseases, for example. interstitial fibrosis, can cope with it by replacing the one lung.

Liver-and small-bowel transplant


Technically, it is very difficult to carry out transplants of the liver or parts of the small intestine. Liver transplantation is now routinely at some of the major hospitals. Small intestine transplantation is still experimental.

It carries out liver transplants in adults who have a life-threatening liver disease, especially certain forms of rapid progress in cirrhosis. Children with a genetic defect in bile aisle or disruption of hepatic metabolism can also be considered for a liver transplant. In both children and adults will be better results if the transplant achieved at a relatively early stage in the disease development. We still have a too small number of donor organs for everyone to get a

If for some reason have to remove large parts of the small intestine, the patient must take food directly into the bloodstream in the rest of his life in order to survive. The method of indtransplantere a Small intestine is an alternative that is still undergoing the experimental stage, but which implies that these patients could return to a more normal life. There is only performed a small number of operations, and only a few patients have survived more than a year.

Bone marrow transplantation


Bone marrow transplantation is nowadays a routine action by most forms of leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, other lymphomas and some other cancers. It also uses the increasingly states of a bone marrow does not function because of other conditions such as aplastic anemia, hereditary immune deficiencies and thalassemi. The main problem with bone marrow transplantation is the opposite in comparison with other transplants, the recipient's body tries to reject the donor organ. By knog

The transplant takes place in two parts.

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