Type of Surgery
Information
Last updated: 02/17/2009
Diabetes and poor kidney function greatly increase the risk of complications from anesthesia during surgery. Organ rejection, excessive bleeding, and infection are other major risks associated with this surgery.
The reason simultaneous kidney-pancreas...
transplants and pancreas after kidney transplants are performed more frequently than pancreas only transplants is the relative risk of immunosuppressant drugs in people with diabetes. People with type I diabetes are already at risk for autoimmune problems, are more prone to infections, and have a complicated medical history that makes suppressing the immune system unadvisable.
On the other hand, diabetes is also the number one cause of chronic kidney failure, or end-stage renal disease (ESRD), which makes this group more likely to eventually require a kidney transplant for survival. In those patients with diabetes who will receive or are already receiving immunosuppressive treatment for a life-saving kidney transplant, a pancreas transplant can return their ability to self-produce insulin.
Patients with type I diabetes considering pancreas transplantation alone must weigh the risks and benefits of the procedure and decide with their doctors whether life-long treatment with immunosuppressive drugs is preferable to life-long insulin dependence.
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Other Information
A pancreas transplant is an organ transplant that involves implanting a healthy pancreas (one that can produce insulin) into a person who has diabetes. Because the pancreas performs functions necessary in the digestion process, the recipient's native pancreas is left in place, and the donated pancreas attached in a different location. In the event of rejection of the new pancreas, the recipient could not survive without the native pancreas still in place. The healthy pancreas comes from a donor who has just died or it may be a partial pancreas from a living donor. Whole pancreas transplants from living donors are not possible, again because the pancreas is a necessary organ for digestion. At present, pancreas transplants are usually performed in persons with insulin-dependent diabetes who have severe complications.
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