Organ transplant is no small matter. First, the patient has gotten to the point where he or she needs to replace a vital body system. And the donor organ often comes from a deceased person, or like with kidney transplants, a very generous donor. No small deal for either party. For an organ recipient there is the long work up to ensure that they will be healthy enough to survive the stresses of surgery and recovery, and furthermore that they do not have some latent condition that will negatively affect the outcome. But, new organ transplant technologies give hope to future recipients.

Following transplant, recipients will be on long term anti-rejection drugs that the patient may be on for the rest of their life. These medications are powerful and have a variety of side effects. Anti-rejection medications suppress your immune system so that your body does not attack the new transplant. Much of the immune response to a transplant comes from the thymus, a gland situated near the heart that produces white blood cells to help fight infections. Side effects are extensive and vary dramatically from patient to patient. And, many organs themselves have only a limited life expectancy. A transplanted kidney from a living donor has among the longest median graft survival rates: as much as nineteen years in some research. A pediatric liver transplant has an incredible median survival rate of twenty-five years.

On the whole, graft survival rates continue to improve as the research progresses. And research continues to give hope to recipient patients. Pediatric cardiologists at Duke University recently announced the details of a successful heart transplant in a six month old with a twist – the baby also received an implant of thymus tissue, which was meant to alter the baby’s immune response so it does not attack the donor tissue. With this success, the baby may not need immunosuppressive drugs in the future. And an advance like that may bode well for future organ transplant recipients.