- Transplants and grafts
- Tissue transplants
- Organ transplants
- Special legal and ethical problems
- Organ and tissue banks
Data on kidney transplant results
In kidney grafts involving identical twins, in which case rejection is not a problem, recipients have survived more than 25 years. A number of patients who have received kidneys from unrelated cadaver donors have survived more than 20 years, demonstrating that in some patients rejection can be controlled with standard immunosuppressive drugs. There has been a gradual improvement in the overall results of kidney transplants. The patient mortality has declined to around 10 percent per year, death usually being due to infection associated with immunosuppressive treatment; to complications of dialysis in patients whose kidneys have failed; or to other facets of kidney disease, such as high blood pressure and coronary artery disease. Recipients also face an increased risk of developing malignant growths, particularly lymphomas (malignant diseases of the lymphatic system). One cause of this may be related to the effects of immunosuppressive treatment. Kidney-graft survival has improved since the introduction of the immunosuppressive agent cyclosporine (also called cyclosporin A; see below), and many centres have achieved a one-year survival rate of 80 percent and a two-year rate of 70 percent for patients with a functioning kidney graft from an unrelated cadaver donor. One-year survival rates of 80 to 90 percent have been attained for kidney grafts between parent and child and more than 90 percent for grafts from well-matched sibling donors. As these statistics indicate, the patient who develops permanent kidney failure now has a reasonable chance of good treatment from a combination of dialysis and kidney transplantation. Those fortunate enough to receive a well-functioning kidney can expect complete rehabilitation.
The heart is a pump with a built-in power supply; it has a delicate regulatory mechanism that permits it to perform efficiently under a wide range of demands. During moments of fear, passion, or violent exercise, the heart rate increases greatly, and the contractions become more forceful, so that the pumping of the blood intrudes on the consciousness; this is experienced by the individual as palpitations. Cessation of the heartbeat has also been, throughout the ages, the cardinal sign of death. Thus, it is perhaps not so surprising that there was an intense public interest when the first attempts were made at transplanting a human heart. The objectives of heart transplantation, nevertheless, are the same as those of other organ grafts.
One of the most important advances in surgery since World War II has been in direct operations on the heart. Heart valves are repaired or replaced with artificial valves, and techniques have been developed so that the heart can be stopped and its function taken over temporarily by an electrical pump. If, however, the muscle of the heart is destroyed, as occurs in certain diseases, the only operation that can cure the patient is to replace the heart with a graft or possibly an artificial heart. Blockage of the coronary arteries and certain other heart-muscle diseases can kill the patient because the muscle of the heart cannot contract properly. A patient with one of these diseases who is close to dying is, therefore, a possible recipient for a heart transplant.
A group of American investigators perfected the technique of heart transplantation in the late 1950s. They showed that a transplanted dog’s heart could provide the animal with a normal circulation until the heart was rejected. The features of rejection of the heart are similar to those of the kidney. The cells that produce immune reactions, the lymphocytes, migrate into the muscle cells of the heart, damage it, and also block the coronary arteries, depriving the heart of its own circulation. Some of the lymphocytes (i.e., B cells) also secrete antibodies that are toxic. In most experiments it was more difficult to prevent rejection of the heart than of the kidney. Despite this, rejection was prevented for long periods in animals. Based on this experimental work, the next logical step was to transplant a human heart into a patient dying of incurable heart disease. This step was taken in 1967 by a surgical team in Cape Town, South Africa.
In the years immediately following the first transplant, numerous heart allografts were performed at medical centres throughout the world. Unfortunately, many recipients succumbed to rejection of the transplanted organ. Furthermore, the heart is more sensitive to lack of blood than the kidneys are; it must be removed from the donor more quickly and can be preserved without damage for only a short period of time. Because of these difficulties—particularly the problem of rejection—the number of heart transplants performed worldwide dropped considerably after the initial excitement abated. Steady advances in detecting and treating rejection were made throughout the 1970s, however; and the introduction of the immunosuppressant cyclosporine in the 1980s brought even further improvements in the long-term survival rates for heart-graft recipients. Interest in the procedure revived, and many hundreds of heart transplants have now been performed. A number of patients have lived five or more years after the operation, and heart grafting has become an accepted therapy for otherwise incurable heart disease. Experimental artificial hearts have also been implanted, but these require a cumbersome external power supply and long-term survival rates are not known.