Work with experimental animals has shown that transplants of hematopoietic stem cells can occasionally colonize other tissues, with the transplanted cells becoming neurons, muscle cells, or epithelia.
Some need combined transplants of both intestine and liver.
Today kidney transplants are the second-most-common transplant operations, after transplants of the cornea.
Allografts are commonly used in the transplants of skin, corneas, hearts, livers, kidneys, and bone and bone marrow, although transplants of the last often come from relatives.
Along with colonoscopies and dyspepsia consultations, he performs transplants of colon bacteria – aka gut microflora.
That made it applicable to transplants of cadaver kidneys, which must be used within 48 hours.
Transplants of such cells, often called bone marrow transplants, are used for other metabolic and immune system diseases, as well.
The new finding is based on patients who received transplants of blood-forming cells from relatives after cancer treatments that had destroyed their own bone marrow cells.
It is also concerned by a 12% drop in the number of heart transplants, of which there were 182 last year.
Doctors are already experimenting with transplants of insulin-producing islet cells from cadavers for patients with Type 1 diabetes, a disease that destroys a person's own islet cells.
As of May 14, the program had been involved in 9,715 transplants of stem cells from unrelated donors, compared with 533 by 1990.
