The current state of liver and pancreas transplantation

The last 20 years have seen progressive developments in the field of clinical transplantation and in many countries kidney transplantation is now the most cost effective manner of treating renal failure. With increasing technical experience failures have become less common and newer immunosuppressive protocols incorporating cyclosporin A can frequently achieve a graft success rate of over 75% at one year with patient survival over 95%. In addition, the patient receiving a kidney graft attains a high quality of rehabilitation. If renal transplantation has now gained wide acceptance other forms of organ transplantation are still in a phase of development and have not yet reached wide acceptance. It is the purpose of this review to present briefly the current clinical status of two forms of solid organ transplantation being employed in clinical practice.