Pancreas and islet transplantation in man

The results of pancreas transplantation have greatly improved, the overall patient and graft 1-year survival rates now being 89 and 62%, respectively. A technically successful graft ensures a near-normal glucose metabolism in most cases, and improves the patient's quality of life. However, pancreas transplantation is not a life-saving procedure and because of the necessary permanent immunosuppression it is usually performed in patients in whom a kidney transplant is needed or has been previously established. In such patients the other diabetic chronic complications are often advanced and limit the potential benefit of pancreas transplantation, but it seems premature to extend the indications to early stage diabetes. Islet transplantation has many potential advantages, mainly the possibilities of immune alteration and immune protection of the transplant that could allow transplantation to be performed without immunosuppression and the use of xenogenic tissue. Major limiting factors are the high numbers of islets necessary to ensure insulin independence and the low yield of islet isolation from adult pancreas. Encouraging, albeit preliminary results have been recently reported in man.