Chronic Allograft Failure

This book addresses one of the largest unmet needs in transplantation, the need to reduce late allograft loss. In the current era, it is reasonable to expect that most allografts will serve their recipients through their life span and death with preserved graft function the ultimate goal for all transplant recipients. However, long term allograft survival has not paralleled improvements made in short term survival. Each year a percentage of the existing organ transplant patients will lose their grafts. The problem of late allograft failure is due in part to pathogenic processes, to drug management, and to transplant patient care delivery. This book pulls together the science in this area and serves as a resource and as a catalyst for further research. The book has been divided into sections covering the entirety of chronic allograft loss from basic science consideration to clinical implications. The goal of this book is to provide the reader with an overview of long term problems in solid organ transplantation. This overview not only includes the diagnosis of immunologic and non-immunologic causes of chronic graft loss but current management as well as novel therapies for future application. This book will make a useful contribution to the literature.

There are many obstacles in kidney transplantation. For the transplant team, there is the balance between immunosuppression to aid in the recipient's tolerance of the allograft and the infection risk of a suppressed immune system. These potential long term complications of kidney transplantation are relatively well known, but there are many other complications that patients and families do not consider when preparing themselves for a kidney transplant. Although the benefits of attempting a kidney transplant far outweigh downfalls of the long term sequelae, kidney transplantation is by no means a benign procedure. It is the hope of these authors that the reader will leave with a sense of understanding towards the kidney recipients.

Transplantation is today firmly established as the therapy of choice for end-stage organ failure. However, despite recent developments, this therapy is still not without challenges and risks: The necessity to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of one's life to prevent allograft rejection trades the morbidity and mortality of organ failure for the risks of infection and cancer as well as for an increased mortality from cardiovascular disease. Thus, there is an urgent need for optimizing the outcome of transplantation by achieving long-term, drug-free graft acceptance with normal organ function.Recently, numerous insights into the dynamic inter-relationship of host immune responses elicited by donor antigen presentation have substantially broadened our understanding of the cascade of events resulting in the acquisition of tolerance. With the pharmacopoeia of the transplant biologist continually expanding, the potential treatment combinations have become baffling and their impact on strategies to induce tolerance even more complex.This book presents novel insights into the pathways of acute rejection and their monitoring through molecular tests, new immunosuppressive agents currently under development as well as the most recent and promising approaches to induce tolerance that have emerged from experimental animal studies.

This fifth edition of KIDNEY TRANSPLANTATION remains the most comprehensive and definitive text on all aspects of renal transplantation as well as the psychological and ethical issues involved. Almost every chapter has been revised or rewritten by new authors, to incorporate the most essential and up-to-date information.

The Janeway's Immunobiology CD-ROM, Immunobiology Interactive, is included with each book, and can be purchased separately. It contains animations and videos with voiceover narration, as well as the figures from the text for presentation purposes.

Heart transplantation remains one of the major scientific achievements of twentieth century medicine. During the past four decades, it has evolved from an unproven experimental surgical technique to the most effective form of therapy for refractory end-stage heart disease. It has captured the public's imagination and expanded our understanding of fundamental immunologic mechanisms that are responsible for cellular and humorally-mediated immunity. Despite its successes, many clinical and scientific problems remain. One or more bouts of acute cellular or humoral (vascular) rejection will occur in over 75% of transplant recipients despite current immunosuppressive strategies. Further, rejection directly results in approximately 20% of post-transplant deaths and is believed to play a major role in the development of late allograft dysfunction and coronary vasculopathy. This book by international experts in the fields of transplantation medicine, immunobiology and cardiac imaging provides the reader with an up-to-date, consise summary of the latest developments in the diagnosis and treatment of acute cardiac rejection. It is axiomatic that a more complete understanding of the pathogenic processes involved in rejection will ultimately lead to its prevention. This volume will be useful to transplant cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons, cardiac pathologists and transplant scientists who seek to prolong the lifespan and improve the quality of life of their transplant recipients.

Chronic Allograft Nephropathy - ECAB - E-Book

The Novartis Foundation Series is a popular collection of the proceedings from Novartis Foundation Symposia, in which groups of leading scientists from a range of topics across biology, chemistry and medicine assembled to present papers and discuss results. The Novartis Foundation, originally known as the Ciba Foundation, is well known to scientists and clinicians around the world.