[Pancreas transplantation: State of the art and future prospects]

During the past 30 years pancreas transplantation evolved into a routine procedure especially suitable for type 1 diabetic recipients undergoing simultaneously kidney transplantation significantly improving quality of life and life expectancy as compared with kidney only recipients. It provides insulin independence with near-normal glucose control without special dietary restriction, freedom from hypoglycemia and chance for halting or regression of microangiopathic diabetes complications. As a separate procedure, pancreas transplantation is carried out mainly in selected subjects suffering from severe hypoglycemic episodes and impaired hypoglycemia awareness or as a subsequent procedure in type 1 diabetic kidney recipients from both cadaveric or living donors. Five-year insulin independence rate following combined pancreas and kidney, pancreas only and pancreas after kidney procedures currently exceed 75, 50 and 62 %, respectively. Though the outcomes still continue to improve, the rate of pancreas transplants has reached a plateau in several European countries or even declines in the United States. Main reasons for that include fewer referrals from diabetes specialist, decreased donor quality, introduction of islet transplantation as a less invasive procedure but probably most of all probably insufficient information on the latest progress and trends achieved in this area. In the area of transplant therapy of diabetes Czech Republic traditionally ranks to the most active countries providing different transplant options according to individual clinical needs including islet transplantation.