Showing posts with label transplant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transplant. Show all posts

Corneal Transplants Under Scrutiny

Corneal transplants (grafts) are assumed to be very successful, but until now the procedure has not been fully examined. A survey of nearly five thousand patients, 4499 to be precise, was done. After a year 92 per cent of transplants were deemed to be successful. An astonishing 1,395 patients had failed results after seven years.

Plain rejection was the major detrimental cause in a third of failed operations. Infection impacted on 18 per cent, with glaucoma affecting 9 per cent. A worrying point is that 10 per cent of recipients did not have any improvement in vision and only a fifth of these experienced rejection. Indeed, some had poorer vision.

It seems too much time is spent on lessening rejection and not enough time is targeted at improving overall patient outcomes. Having to do the operation again is a real tragedy for a patient. He/she would not be in a positive frame of mind after a failure the first time.
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Health
TwitThis
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Animal To Human Transplants Allowed in Australia

An old joke: Do you want a new heart? Then get one from a gorilla - "grunt!"

This is not a joke any longer. Australia has just given the go ahead for animal-to-human transplants. This is a turn around from the outright banning of such transplants in 2004. There are two conditions: one, a monitoring system must be in place: and two, there must be a patient register. New Zealand allowed transplants in 2005. The first "transplant" involved implanting insulin producing pig cells into volunteer diabetics.

This change has happened when direct research on animals such as chimpanzees is being reduced because tests can more effectively be done in a test tube. Results in many instances are quite different for chimpanzees, for example. This was discovered in AIDs research when chimpanzees didn't get AIDs. They became carriers of the disease. Animals are proving more useful when material at a cellular level is transplanted. Using animals as hosts is far more beneficial than just infecting them and seeing what happens. Soon, infusion of material to patients suffering from Parkinson's disease will begin.

The medical world is hoping that research done in Australia will be of a high standard and will add to knowledge about new medical techniques. Great care is needed in housing animals such as pigs in sterile environments. It is hoped that improved transplant success from animals will reduce the waiting lists for organ transplants.
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Science
TwitThis
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Surgery the Only Cure for Baldness

Bald men try just about anything to turn back a receding hairline. For some, hair loss is at the back and they don't know it until a "friend" tells them. For others the hairline goes out like the tide.

All manner of things are tried from hair tonics, to laser and LED treatments. Some medications offer some hope but they do take away some of your "maleness". The only real solution is transplanting of hair follicles from the back of the head to to the bald area. This is time consuming surgery and the result is new hair spread very sparsely over the bald spot.

For centuries a search has been on for the Holy Grail of baldness cures. Because it is really a hormone problem a lot of work has been done on this. Unfortunately, there are side affects and the mere stopping of further hair loss is the best that can be expected. Stress also causes baldness. Of course, for this there is no treatment.
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Society
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