Stoma or No Stoma in Intestinal Transplantation

More effective methods of host and donor organ immunosuppression and improved microvascular techniques have led to increased interest in small-bowel transplantation in various experimental models. Prior to this decade, intestinal graft loss was frequently the result of technical problems of vascular thrombosis or hemorrhage and in some studies approached 40%–50%. Recently, the reported early graft failure from arterial or venous thrombosis has been less than 10% (Dilez-Perez et al. 1984; Pritchard et al. 1985). The use of cyclosporine as an immunosuppressive has resulted in prolonged intestinal allograft survival (Craddock et al. 1983; Dilez- Perez et al. 1984). Although interest in clinical trials is being rekindled by the improvement in experimental results, it is clear that there are still many unanswered questions about the technical aspects of small-bowel transplantation.