Word: livers
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...have been pressing the Food and Drug Administration to make it widely available. Last week an FDA advisory panel issued a strong rebuff. After reviewing all the clinical studies, the panel agreed 8-0 that tacrine "did not show a clinically meaningful benefit." Moreover, the danger of its causing liver damage is significant, the group said...
...doctor's new dilemma: two weeks ago, Ronald Busuttil, director of UCLA's liver-transplant program, heard that a liver, just the right size and blood type, was suddenly available for a man who had been waiting for a transplant. The patient, severely ill but not on the verge of death, was being readied for the procedure when Busuttil's phone rang. A five-year-old girl who had previously been given a transplant had suffered a catastrophe. Her liver had stopped functioning. Busuttil had to make a decision. "I had two desperately ill patients," he says, but the choice...
...Thomas Starzl, the renowned Pittsburgh surgeon who pioneered liver transplants, stopped performing live-donor transplants of any kind. He explained why in a speech in 1987: "The death of a single well-motivated and completely healthy living donor almost stops the clock worldwide. The most compelling argument against living donation is that it is not completely safe for the donor." Starzl said he knew of 20 donors who had died, though other doctors regard this number as miraculously low, since there have been more than 100,000 live-donor transplants...
...dies. Though medical considerations are paramount, subjective judgments often come into play. Can an uneducated patient handle the sometimes complex follow-up care required after surgery? Should a relative be approached and asked to give up a piece of himself? Should an alcoholic be granted a new liver? Such dilemmas can be far more complex than any challenge posed by the immune system...
Alyssa was born with biliary atresia, a condition that leads to liver failure. When a national waiting list produced no suitable donors, doctors asked if one of her parents would become America's first living liver donor. A healthy person can lose up to 75% of a liver and survive: within weeks the organ will fully regenerate. Both were willing; Teresa's liver proved more compatible. In a 14-hour procedure in November 1989, surgeons at the University of Chicago Medical Center removed the left lobe of Teresa's liver, trimmed it down, then transplanted it into Alyssa. During...