[Current status of allogeneic pancreas transplantation]

Up to now we registered all over the world 485 transplantations of the pancreas. The partial donation of organs of relatives was performed in forty cases. On August 1st 1984 297 patients (70%) survived after a transplantation of the pancreas; of them 131 had a functioning transplant (30%). 54 transplanted organs (13%) had a good function for longer than 1 year. The most frequent complications were the thrombosis of the transplant, the pancreatitis, the fistulae of the pancreas and the rejection. Of 166 human allogenic islet transplantations at present none is functioning. Early rejections were the causes for the short function times. There were no cases of death by an islet transplantation. The present research concentrates to new methods of the islet isolation from the human pancreas and the immunological influence on the isolated islets.