“
“Purpose of review
The current review addresses a critical need in clinical islet transplantation, namely the routine transition from the requirement of two to four donors down to one donor per recipient. The ability to achieve single-donor islet transplantation will provide many more islet grafts for treatment of an ever-expanding patient base with type 1 diabetes (T1DM) with poor glycemic control. Avoiding exposure of recipients to multiple
different donor human leukocyte associated (HLA) antigens is critical if risk of donor sensitization is to be avoided. This point is important as further islet or pancreas transplants HDAC inhibitor in the remote future or the potential future need for a solid organ kidney transplant may become prohibitive if the recipient is sensitized.
Recent findings
This review addresses systematically all areas that contribute to the success or failure of single-donor islet engraftment, beginning with donor-related factors, optimizing islet
isolation and culture conditions, and describes a series of strategies in the treatment of the recipient to prevent inflammation, apoptosis, islet thrombosis, and improve metabolic functional outcome, all of which will lead to improved single-donor engraftment success.
Summary
If single-donor islet transplantation can be achieved routinely, therapy will become more widely available, more accepted by the transplant community (currently pancreas transplantation requires only a single donor), and this situation will have a major impact overall as an effective treatment option in T1DM.”
“OBJECTIVE: To assess the cost-effectiveness
EGFR inhibitors cancer of diagnostic laparoscopy, selleck screening library computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after indeterminate ultrasonography in pregnant women with suspected appendicitis.
METHODS: A decision-analytic model was developed to simulate appendicitis during pregnancy taking into consideration the health outcomes for both the pregnant women and developing fetuses. Strategies included diagnostic laparoscopy, CT, and MRI. Outcomes included positive appendectomy, negative appendectomy, maternal perioperative complications, preterm delivery, fetal loss, childhood cancer, lifetime costs, discounted life expectancy, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios.
RESULTS: Magnetic resonance imaging is the most cost-effective strategy, costing $6,767 per quality-adjusted life-year gained relative to CT, well below the generally accepted $50,000 per quality-adjusted life-year threshold. In a setting where MRI is unavailable, CT is cost-effective even when considering the increased risk of radiation-associated childhood cancer ($560 per quality-adjusted life-year gained relative to diagnostic laparoscopy). Unless the negative appendectomy rate is less than 1%, imaging of any type is more cost-effective than proceeding directly to diagnostic laparoscopy.
CONCLUSIONS: Depending on imaging costs and resource availability, both CT and MRI are potentially cost-effective.