Bowel transplant??

[Spooky]

bowel transplant??

I am new to this Crohns business, my husband was dx'd a year ago....anyway my question is this, you hear about transplants all the time, how come there are no bowel transplants? Can you imagine getting a nice healthy GI tract to replace your old disease ravaged one?

 

[beth]

There are. It's just not as nice and fluffy as heart transplants... (cynical mode off).
Probably harder too as 'it' is a very large organ compared to anything else.

Addenbrookes in Cambridge, UK, is doing small bowel transplants. I don't know any more information than that, only that my GI is the the specialist involved.

 

[Carrie630]

an intestinal transplant is tough. You lose a few inches of intestine for each transplant attempt, and intestinal transplants don't last forever. This was a while back, and I'm sure they've made some advances, but my cousin didn't get an intestinal transplant because she only had a foot of good intestine so if the transplant failed she wouldn't be able to re-connect. It's the very last resort. Before she died she had been on TPN for about three years.

 

[Guest9283]

More than likely your immune system would start attacking the new organs. It would hypothetically be treating the symptom once again, and not the underlying cause (immune disorder). Amoungst other obvious complications that come with a surgery of that magnitude.