| Popis: |
Diabetes mellitus is a common chronic disease associated with poor quality of life and significant complications including cardiovascular disease, blindness, kidney failure, and lower limb amputations. Improvement of patient outcomes is achieved with careful monitoring of blood glucose and self-adjusted insulin injections. Unfortunately, despite rigorous monitoring and treatment, life-threatening complications and significant disease remain in a proportion of patients. Pancreas (PanTx) and islet transplantation (IT) are the only treatments that can potentially achieve complete normalization of the glucose metabolism by replacing the insulin-producing beta cells. Although there are significant complications of pancreas transplantation particularly in the early posttransplantation period, this procedure is routinely done with good medium- and long-term results. Success with IT can be achieved in the short term, but long-term results are still very modest. The current article describes the main aspects of pancreas and IT with particular emphasis on indications, general technical aspects, and posttransplant monitoring and also discusses the main pathological processes leading to graft failure. |
