Journal of the American College of Surgeons
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After the successful evolution of hepatic transplantation during the last decade, small bowel and multivisceral transplantation remains the sole elusive achievement for the next era of transplant surgeons. Until recently, and for the last thirty years, the results of the sporadic attempts of intestinal transplantation worldwide were discouraging because of unsatisfactory graft and patient survival. The experimental and clinical demonstration of the superior therapeutic efficacy of FK 506, a new immunosuppressive drug, ushered in the current era of small bowel and multivisceral transplantation with initial promising results. ⋯ Although intestinal transplantation has gone through the feasibility phase, strategies will be required to increase its practicality. One possibility is to combine intestinal transplantation with contemporaneous autologous bone marrow transplantation.