• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Risks of Organ Rejection

The primary risk of organ transplantation is potential rejection by the body. The immune system treats a transplanted organ as if it were an invading organism and tries to destroy it. For this reason, for most transplants (except for heart and lung transplants; see page 658), doctors try to find a donor whose blood and tissue types are as close to those of the recipient as possible. (Because the heart and lungs can be kept alive for only a brief time outside the body, there is not enough time for tissue matching.) A parent or sibling is the person most likely to be a compatible donor. Corneal transplants do not require tissue matching because the cornea has no blood supply and does not trigger rejection.

To prevent rejection of a transplanted organ, doctors have to suppress the recipient’s immune system with drugs. Older immune-suppressing drugs had serious side effects and were not always effective. With the availability of better immune-suppressing drugs such as cyclosporine, tacrolimus, and mycophenolate, survival rates have improved dramatically. Immune-suppressing drugs have to be taken for life to avoid organ rejection. Side effects from the drugs can include high blood pressure, fluid retention, shakiness, excessive hair growth, and, rarely, kidney damage. To offset these side effects, a person may need to take additional medications.

Because the person’s immune system is weakened from the antirejection drugs, he or she is at increased risk of developing severe infections such as pneumonia. For this reason, doctors also prescribe antibiotics and other infection-fighting medications for people having transplants. The risk of cancer, especially skin cancer, is also higher for transplant recipients than for the general population. Some types of cancer develop in transplant recipients as side effects of the immune-suppressing medications; others occur as a consequence of the person’s weakened immune system. Other side effects that occur depend on the type of organ transplanted.

Outlook

The survival outlook for organ transplant recipients is bright and continues to improve each year. Nationwide, 98 percent of people who receive a donated organ of any type are alive after 1 year, and 91 percent survive at least 3 years (except for heart-lung transplant recipients). Most people who have had a transplant find that the procedure has improved the quality of their life.

Kidney transplant

A kidney transplant can be an effective treatment for kidney failure. The donor kidney is usually placed in the right lower abdomen and connected to the iliac artery and the iliac vein. The ureter (the tube that carries urine from the kidney to the bladder) of the donor kidney is connected to the bladder. The diseased kidneys are usually left in place because they are usually harmless, they may have some hormonal function, and removing them requires additional surgery. The transplant procedure takes 3 to 6 hours and is followed by up to 2 weeks of recovery in the hospital. The donor kidney may begin producing urine right away, or it may take several weeks to begin working.

8

Disorders of the Male Reproductive System

The male reproductive system is made up of the penis, testicles, prostate gland, Cowper’s glands, seminal vesicles, and vas deferens. Each of the two testicles is suspended by a spermatic cord inside a pouch of skin and muscle called the scrotum. The spermatic cord is made up of the vas deferens, nerves, and blood vessels. The testicles produce sperm and the male sex hormone testosterone. Sperm are collected and stored in a long, tightly coiled tube called the epididymis, which lies above and behind each testicle. Sperm mature over a period of about 3 weeks inside the epididymis before they pass into the vas deferens, a long duct that acts as a storage and transport system. Sperm travel from the vas deferens, past the prostate gland, into a pair of sacs called the seminal vesicles.

The male reproductive system The visible parts