Outcomes of Bone Marrow Infusions With Heart Transplants
Overview of Heart Transplants
The opportunity for an individual who is suffering from a heart disease to have a healthy heart again that is fully functional may be possible through a heart transplant. If the transplant is successful, the patient’s heart functions and blood circulation will work normally and often times better than ever.
The blood type and body size will determine the match of a donor heart for that of the recipient’s. To prevent the organ rejection, immunosuppressive drugs are needed. Heart transplant patients must be monitored closely after the opration to see that the new heart is not rejected and to prevent complications that may arise from taking the immunosuppressive drugs such as infection, high blood pressure, kidney disease, diabetes and cancer.
Bone Marrow Transfusions
Bone marrow transfusions or stem cells transplants are administered to treat a wide variety of diseases including certain cancers such as leukemia, sickle cell anemia and other immune-deficiency diseases. In connection with heart transplant patients, bone marrow transfusion is very important due to the delayed immune reconstitution resulting from long term use of immunosuppressive drugs. Their body therefore needs extra help in producing healthy blood cells to maintain a strong immune system to fight off infection and other diseases.
Outcomes of Bone Marrow Infusions with Heart Transplants
There is an ongoing study sponsored by the University of Louisville, The Jewish Hospital, Louisville, Kentucky and the Department of Defense with regards to how a bone marrow transfusion may affect patients after a heart transplant. Accordingly, an excerpt taken from their page entitled “Bone Marrow Transplant To Induce Tolerance in Heart Transplant Recipients” states:
“Bone marrow transplant has been shown in animal studies and in humans to induce tolerance following organ transplant.”
Bone marrow transplants after heart surgeries may decrease the risk of chronic organ rejection without compromising the immune system’s proper function. The bone marrow transfusion may aid the recipient body’s into developing tolerance in recognizing the transplanted heart as its own rather than foreign. Further study is ongoing to see if the success in the procedure may decrease or eliminate entirely the need for immunosuppressive medication that is necessary beforehand. As to date, the main problem with heart transplants is graft rejection. It is a necessity that heart transplant patients take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.
Heart transplants may prolong the lives of people with incurable heart diseases. 80% of heart transplant patients have an average survival rate after two years of the operation. However, more studies with relation to the outcome of bone marrow infusion with heart transplants may indicate that rejection can be controlled and that it may significantly increase the patient’s survival to more than ten years.
Resources
Clinical Trials Gov.: clinicaltrials-lhc.nlm.nih.gov
Medicine Net: www.medicinenet.com/heart_transplant
Medline Plus: www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
American Heart Association: www.newsroom.heart.org
