Sunday, October 25, 2009

Immunosuppressants?

If a person had an organ transplant how long would they survive assuming they stopped taking their immunosuppressants?

Weeks, months, years?
Answer:
It depends on the organ transplanted.
Heart: a few days to a week or two
Kidneys: Losing a transplanted kidney would not kill you if you had access to dialysis. Without dialysis renal failure would take a few weeks to kill you.
Lungs: a few days to a week
Pancreas: you would be diabetic again within a week but it would not kill you if you resumed taking insulin
Small Bowel: you would lose the graft in a week or two. Need emergency surgery for bleeding or obstruction of the gut and be dependent on total parenteral nutrition but none of that would necessarily kill you.
Liver: about a month. Curiously though some liver transplant recipients become tolerant and do not reject their livers even if they stop taking immunosuppression. This is rare though.

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