Word: livers
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Mike and Adam Hurewitz grew up together on Long Island, in the suburbs of New York City. They were very close, even for brothers. So when Adam's liver started failing, Mike offered to give him half of his. The operation saved Adam's life. But Mike, who went into the hospital in seemingly excellent health, developed a complication--perhaps a blood clot--and died last week...
...soul searching in the transplant community. Was it a tragic fluke or a sign that transplant surgery has reached some kind of ethical limit? The Mount Sinai Medical Center, the New York City hospital where the complex double operation was performed, has put on hold its adult living-donor liver-transplant program, pending a review of Hurewitz's death. Mount Sinai has performed about 100 such operations in the past three years...
...operation to transplant a liver, however, is a lot trickier than one to transplant a kidney. Not only is the liver packed with blood vessels, but it also makes lots of proteins that need to be produced in the right ratios for the body to survive. When organs from the recently deceased are used, the surgeon gets to pick which part of the donated liver looks the best--and to take as much of it as needed. Assuming all goes well, a healthy liver can grow back whatever portion of the organ is missing, sometimes within a month...
...living-donor transplant works particularly well when an adult donates a modest portion of the liver to a child. Usually only the left lobe of the organ is required, leading to a mortality rate for living donors in the neighborhood of 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000. But when the recipient is another adult, as much as 60% of the donor's liver has to be removed. "There really is very little margin for error," says Dr. Fung. By way of analogy, he suggests, think of a tree. "An adult-to-child living-donor transplant is like cutting...
...blood vessels, which some scientists think may help prevent cancer by depriving early tumors of nourishment. (Catechins may also prevent DNA damage caused by carcinogens from occurring in the first place.) Indeed, population studies in China link drinking green tea daily with a lowered risk of stomach, esophageal and liver cancers. Studies from Japan show that consuming 10 cups a day may reduce the risk of heart disease. If that much tea seems hard to swallow, consider using it is a mouthwash; reports suggest that swishing green tea around the mouth may inhibit cavity-causing bacteria. Applied to the skin...