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SA surgeon's pioneering HIV surgery

July, 29 2010

SA surgeon's pioneering HIV surgery


More than 40 years after Professor Chris Barnard won world acclaim for pioneering the heart transplant, Groote Schuur Hospital is once again in the limelight.
Cape Town surgeon Dr Elmi Muller and her team have received worldwide attention for their pioneering work in transplanting kidneys from HIV-positive donors to HIV-positive recipients. The surgery was recently featured in the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Groote Schuur surgeon was also invited to the US to discuss her work at the National Institutes of Health meeting there.
Muller said: "I'm very pleased that our work has been acknowledged. It's receiving a lot of international attention." The first HIV kidney transplant was carried out two years ago, and since then the team have performed nine similar procedures. "We have set a precedent. If everything goes well this could change things for HIV-positive people needing a kidney transplant."
The chief concern when transplanting organs from an HIV-positive donor to an HIV-positive recipient was the potential risk of "super-infection". This is when a strain or subtype of HIV triggers a more rapid progression of HIV in the recipient. Muller said a lot of care was taken.
All organs came from donors who had not died of Aids but of other causes, such as car accidents. They had not had antiretroviral therapy and had no history of opportunistic infections or cancer, or of kidney disease.
In all cases the transplant recipients enjoyed good renal function after the transplant.
"Responses from patients have been very positive. They've been given a lifeline," Muller said.


According to iol.co.za http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=vn20100724081645945C538032