Slovenská chirurgia 2/2015

The current view of the pancreas transplantation

Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a chronic disease that may lead to many life-threatening complications – especially cardiovascular, kidney, eyes and nerves diseases and many others. In general DM can be divided into 4 main groups: type 1 DM, type 2 DM, specific types of DM and gestational DM. Patients with type 1 DM are suffering from complete lack of insulin, that’s why they are vitally dependent on exogenous insulin administration. Pancreas transplantation and the transplantation of isolated Langerhans islets are the only currently used methods which are able to induce long term physiological blood glucose levels without the risk of hypoglycaemia in patients with type 1 DM. Treatment with insulin can be stopped immediately after successful pancreas transplantation. Risks associated with difficult surgery procedure and the need of lifetime use of immunosuppressive therapy are negatives for the patients.

Keywords: type 1 diabetes mellitus, pancreas transplantation, surgical technique, surgical complications.