Transplant Issues
Rare Transplant Allows Young Woman to Forgo 60 Pills Daily
By
Mar 13, 2012 - 4:15:15 PM

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Surgeons at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System performed a rare living-donor parathyroid gland transplant to help a 22-year-old woman maintain normal calcium levels without the need for high-dose supplementation.

Ashley Slussar, of Joliet, Ill., had all of her parathyroid glands
removed in 2006 because they had grown large and were overproducing
parathyroid hormone. The hyperparathyroidism was caused by years of
kidney disease and dialysis, which she needed to survive.

As a result of having no parathyroid glands, she required 60 calcium
pills a day to maintain normal calcium blood levels. Without the
supplements, she could suffer life-threatening complications.

Slussar was first diagnosed with kidney disease when she was 12 years
old. She had received two living-donor kidney transplants, one in 2003
from her mother and the other in 2006 from her sister.

Slussar's parathyroid glands were removed following the first kidney
transplant. The parathyroid glands (located in the neck behind the
thyroid) regulate calcium levels in the blood. Slussar's parathyroid
glands were overactive and needed to be removed to prevent dangerously
high calcium and diffuse bone destruction.

UIC surgeons began brainstorming how to help Slussar with a parathyroid
transplant.

Dr. Enrico Benedetti, chief of surgery at the University of Illinois
Hospital, had read in the medical literature about the first successful
parathyroid transplant, performed in 1984. But the patient and donor in
that case were identical twins.

Slussar did not have an identical twin, but Benedetti believed that her
sister, who had already donated her kidney, was Ashley's best hope.

"Ashley was already taking anti-rejection medication after receiving
her sister's kidney, and we believed that transplanting one parathyroid
gland would produce enough parathyroid hormone to help regulate her
calcium levels," said Benedetti, the Warren H. Cole Chair in Surgery at
UIC.

A surgical team led by Dr. Pier Cristoforo Giulianotti, chief of
minimally invasive, general and robotic surgery at the hospital, used
the robotic-assisted da Vinci Surgical System to delicately remove one
of Kimberly Slussar's four tiny parathyroid glands.

Traditional surgery to remove the parathyroid glands, or the larger
thyroid gland, involves making a 1- to 4-inch incision in the lower
neck, leaving a noticeable scar after surgery.

Instead, Giulianotti made one small incision under her sister's right
arm to accommodate the robotic arms and endoscopic camera. One
parathyroid gland was removed from Kimberly and transplanted into
Ashley last September.

This transplant procedure may be relevant for a only small number of
patients, but the robotic-assisted parathyroidectomy and thyroidectomy
procedures "are valuable for the vast majority of patients who want to
avoid a neck incision for cosmetic reasons," said Giulianotti, the
Lloyd M. Nyhus Professor of Surgery at UIC.

For Kimberly, the robotic donor operation made the procedure more
acceptable, since she would not have a visible scar in her neck.

Ashley is now being weaned from calcium supplements -- she's down to 10
pills daily -- and will soon require no supplementation. Her
parathyroid hormone levels are now within normal limits.

"I'm very happy that I could help Ashley -- twice," said Kimberly, who
finds it difficult to imagine everything her sister has gone through in
the past 10 years.

"I would do it again to help her live a more normal life without
dialysis and without having to take all those pills each day."

For more information about the University of Illinois Hospital & Health
Sciences System, visit www.hospital.uillinois.org

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