A team at the Leuven university-hospital have developed a technique to repair major damage to the midsection of the body using tissue from a deceased donor. The new procedure saves the patient from a lifetime use of anti-rejection medication.
Surgeons at UZ Leuven have carried out the first transplant in the world using donor tissue to repair damage to the torso. The new technique, developed at the university-hospital, frees the patient from a lifetime of having to take anti-rejection drugs.
“The tissue from the deceased donor is fully incorporated into the recipient’s own tissue,” says Laurens Ceulemans, a thoracic and transplant surgeon at UZ Leuven. “The vessels that supply blood to the transplanted tissue come from the recipient, not the donor. And you cannot reject your own blood vessels. So the donated tissue essentially becomes part of the patient’s own body.”
Six-pack
Today, large, gaping wounds in the abdomen, chest or diaphragm are usually repaired using a synthetic mesh. This can cause problems in the case of an infection as the material itself can get infected and may have to be removed.
An alternative has been biological material derived from animals, but this is expensive to produce and isn’t always strong enough for a human transplant. So the Leuven surgeons have been working on another solution, which has now been carried out: strong connective tissue from the abdominal wall of a deceased donor.
Our hypothesis is that the body will completely take over the tissue
Dr Laurens Ceulemans
This involves the so-called rectus sheath, a strong layer of connective tissue surrounding the rectus abdominis muscles, the muscles that form the so-called “six-pack.” This tissue is both strong and flexible.
An additional major advantage is that the patient does not require immunosuppressive drugs. In conventional organ transplants, such as with the kidney, liver or lungs, these drugs are necessary, often for life, to prevent the body from rejecting the transplanted organ.
The researchers even suspect that, over time, no donor cells will remain in the transplanted tissue. “Our hypothesis is that the body will completely take over the tissue,” says Ceulemans.
The technique also offers several practical advantages. Donor tissue can be stored for up to one month so can be available for a patient who immediately needs surgery. In addition, the blood type of the donor and the patient don’t need to match.
The results of the research have been published in both the Annals of Surgery and The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Ceulemans also recently presented the findings at the annual meeting of the European Surgical Association in Rome, where he was awarded the event’s first prize for his research.