Intestinal and Ex-Vivo Transplant

Transplantation

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Intestinal Transplantation

Patients sometimes develop extremely serious problems that prevent them from absorbing essential nutrients through the intestine. Because rejection of the donor intestine remains a serious risk, doctors reserve intestinal transplantation for patients with life-threatening conditions including complications that can develop following long-term feeding through total parenteral nutrition and liver failure.

Organ Transplant
Program brochure
(click image
to open PDF)

Potential candidates for intestinal transplantation include patients with:

Crohn's disease
trauma
volvulus
chronic intestinal pseudo-obstruction
short gut syndrome
necretizing enterocolitis
intestinal atresias
gastroschisis
certain desmoid tumors

graphic for brochure about intestinal and ex-vivo transplants at New York Presbyterian

Information
about intestinal and
ex-vivo transplants
at NYP (click image
to open PDF)

Transplantation of a deceased donor's intestines is most commonly performed in children with short bowel syndrome. This may be an option for children with intestinal failure who have a functioning liver.

Advances in surgical technique, immunosuppressant medications, and post-operative monitoring have significantly improved survival rates in the last decade, rendering transplantation before liver failure a viable option.

Combined Transplant

Combined liver and intestinal transplantation is an option for patients with liver and intestinal failure, but who have a normal stomach and pancreas. In rare cases, the stomach, liver, pancreas, spleen, and intestine may all require transplantation. Transplantation of multiple organs is known as "multivisceral transplantation."

Ex-Vivo Transplantation

NewYork-Presbyterian transplant surgeons have also successfully performed ex-vivo transplantation in which surgeons removed five or more organs from patients with deeply embedded abdominal tumors, excise the tumors from the organs, and then reimplanted the patient's own organs.

Dr. Tomoaki Kato and others at a press conference in March 2009 discuss the surgery of a seven-year-old girl from Long Island with a large abdominal tumor growing amongst her organs. In a 23-hour historic surgery, Dr. Kato removed the six organs surrounding the tumor; then removed the tumor itself; and returned the organs.

Contact Information

Intestinal and multivisceral transplants for adult patients are done through the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. For pediatric patients, these transplants are done through the Pediatric Liver and Intestinal Rehabilitation and Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. (Please see our Pediatric Transplants page for more information.)