The History Of The Transplant

1954: First successful kidney transplant from one twin to another with no anti-rejection drugs necessary. Dr. Joseph Murray, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston. (More kidney transplants between identical twins were performed immediately afterward, and some of those kidney recipients are still alive.)

1967: First successful liver transplant, Dr. Thomas Starzl, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver.

1967: World's first heart transplant, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, South Africa.

1968: First successful heart transplant in United States, Dr. Denton Cooley at Houston's St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital.

1968: Uniform Anatomical Gift Act passed, creating the "Donor Card" and allowing families to consent to or refuse donation. It also prohibited doctors attending the donor from participating in organ removal or transplantation.

1978: Uniform Brain Death Act passed, expanding for the first time the traditional definition of death. "Brain death" IS death.

1983: Cyclosporine, a revolutionary anti-rejection drug, approved for commercial use, sparking a huge increase in transplants.

1984: National Organ Transplant Act passed, prohibiting the sale of human organs and setting up a national transplant network to procure and distribute organs. The United Network for Organ Sharing received the federal contract to oversee the network starting in 1986.

1986: "Routine request" law passed, requiring hospitals to give families the opportunity to donate organs by asking them in appropriate cases. FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=

" EARLY EXPERIMENTS

1902 - The first sucessful experimental kidney transplants were performed at the Vienna Medical School in Austria with animals.

1909 - The first kidney transplant experiments were performed in humans in France using animal kidneys.

A surgeon inserted slices of rabit kidney into a child suffering from kidney failure. Although “the immediate results were excellent” the child died about 2 weeks later.

While such transplants did sucessfully produce urine, they lasted only for about an hour before ceasing to function.

Scientists of the time believed kidney transplants were possible, but their success was limited by unknown “biochemical barriers,” which prevented long-term kidney survival.

1933 - The first human-to-human kidney transplant was performed

Unknown to doctors at the time, there were mismatches in donor and recipient blood groups and the donor kidney never functioned

1940’s - Sir Peter Medawar at the University of London experimented with the immunologic basis of organ rejection.

Early 1950’s - Cortisone-like medications were used to suppress the human body’s self-defense system (immune system), resulting in some kidney transplant success.

THE PERFECT MATCH

1954 - Joeseph E. Murray and his colleagues at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the first truly successful kidney transplant from one twin to another. This was done without any immunosuppressive medication. A photograph of this procedure is seen above.

Scientists predicted that immune system reactions should be minimal between identical twins (because their organs were indistinguishable to each other’s immune systems).

More kidney transplants between identical twins were successfully performed, and some of those kidney recipients are still alive today.

REJECTION PERFECTION

Late 1950’s - New approaches were needed to prevent the body from fighting off a “foreign” donor kidney when an identical twin donor was not available.

1960’s - TISSUE TYPING ADVANCEMENTS - Better techniques for matching donor and recipient blood and tissue types, as well as improvements in preserving cadaveric (from recently deceased donors) kidneys, were developed.

1961 - IMMUNOSUPPRESSION ADVANCEMENTS - Powerful immunosuppressives became available and, in combination, helped decrease the chance for kidney rejection

1980s and 1990s - New tecniques, new medications and new patient information have helped make kidney transplants a safer, more effective and more routine procedure

A single organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people by donating the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas and intestines. And one tissue donor can improve the lives of more than 50 people by donating eyes, bone, soft tissue, heart valves, veins and skin.

the heart and kidney are the most common transplants of today.

Autograft: Tissue transplanted from one part of the body to another in the same individual. Also called an autotransplant. for example from the bottom to the face

Allograft: The transplant of an organ or tissue from one individual to another of the same species with a different genotype. A transplant from one person to another, but not an identical twin, is an allograft. Allografts account for many human transplants, including those from cadaveric, living related, and living unrelated donors. Called also an allogeneic graft or a homograft.

xenotransplantation

the transplantation of an organ or tissue from an animal of one species to an animal of a different species for example from a pig to a human

immunosuppression

Suppression of the body's immune system and its ability to fight infections and other diseases. Immunosuppression may be deliberately induced with drugs, as in preparation for bone marrow or other organ transplantation, to prevent rejection of the donor tissue. It may also result from certain diseases such as AIDS or lymphoma or from anticancer drugs.

In 1954 the first successful kidney transplant occured , no donor rejection injetions were used, it was so successful because some of the patients are still alive today.

Since humans naturally have two kidneys, but can live with just one, the kidney lent itself well to the process. (Of the major organs, the kidney is still the one most often transplanted.) The first attempts