Live data from Hacker News

Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

latimes.com

1–10 of 112 posts

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#3
“There are so many unknowns and so many new things we are discovering,” said Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, director of plastic surgery transplantation at Brigham and Women’s and one of Tarleton’s surgeons. Still, he said, “It’s really not realistic to hope faces are going to last (the patient’s) lifetime.”

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#7
This is to be expected. Any time we do any transplant immunosupressants are given to the recipient for the rest of their life, but this only slows the inevitable. Heart transplants recipients all get accelerated atherosclerosis. Lung transplant recipients all get long term fibrosis. We buy time with these procedures and do everything we can to keep them going, but if you have a transplant, you're in a really bad spot to begin with.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#9

This is to be expected. Any time we do any transplant immunosupressants are given to the recipient for the rest of their life, but this only slows the inevitable. Heart transplants recipients all get accelerated atherosclerosis. Lung transplant recipients all get long term fibrosis. We buy time with these procedures and do everything we can to keep them going, but if you have a transplant, you're in a really bad spot…

I wonder how long it will take until growing organs from the recipient's own stem cells is actually viable. There definitely is some interesting research, and it would completely circumvent the problems with the immune system.

Re: Face transplant recipient’s donor face now failing

#10

This is to be expected. Any time we do any transplant immunosupressants are given to the recipient for the rest of their life, but this only slows the inevitable. Heart transplants recipients all get accelerated atherosclerosis. Lung transplant recipients all get long term fibrosis. We buy time with these procedures and do everything we can to keep them going, but if you have a transplant, you're in a really bad spot…

Thanks for this. I had no idea this was the case, and have long operated under the erroneous belief that most transplants basically worked and left the recipient relatively problem-free afterward—well, at least as far as the transplant was concerned. It is odd to learn that transplants are a time-buying exercise.
Post reply on HN