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April 25, 2005

Another Transplate Success

An islet cell transplant performed at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC appears to have had success after three procedures:

Andrea Anderson is a transplant recipient, "It's still hard to believe I'm off insulin, when I do tests with my meter, I mean I'm still doing that, and getting a level of 100 or 80 or 120, it's amazing to me after I've just eaten, you know, maybe a bowl of spaghetti."

For anyone with diabetes, what Anderson is describing is simply astounding. Dr. Paul Gores is a transplant surgeon, "It was apparent pretty much within 24 hours that this was gonna work."

Gores says that was after Annie's third pancreatic islet cell transplant, "We waited two weeks, and we measured her insulin secretion, and the islets, the secretion was beautiful. It was better than mine, I'm sure."

Each of Annie's transplants started inside a lab with a pancreas from an organ donor. Dr. Craig Halberstadt says for 14 hours, the transplant team separated out minute islet cells, "A thimbleful of cells that we could transplant back into the patient."

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Posted by Diabetologica at April 25, 2005 7:43 AM