A Singaporean man, Mr Shawn Huang, aged 29, has become the first ever person to have his pancreas and his kidneys replaced during the same operation.
This major surgery was intended to restore the wellness of Mr Huang, who suffers from type 1 diabetes. This landmark operation should improve the future wellbeing of the patient significantly, as he has suffered with diabetes all his life, and was diagnosed at the age of just 14. This form of diabetes is caused when the human pancreas malfunctions and does not produce enough insulin.
When the pancreas does not produce sufficient insulin, the sufferer can become very ill, as insulin is a hormone that regulates the blood sugar levels in the human body. Sufferers of type 1 diabetes have to have insulin treatment on a daily basis throughout the course of their life.
For Mr Huang, however, things took a turn for the worse in August 2011 when his kidneys began to fail. He was forced to sign up to the waiting list for a donor kidney. Prospects did not look good for him, as the typical wait for an organ transplant is between eight and nine years. A patient who was suffering from type 1 diabetes in conjunction with kidney failure would not live long enough to see this transplant, as statistics have shown that only 38 percent of type 1 diabetes patients who have kidney failure live longer than five years.
Luckily for Mr Huang, the dual pancreas and kidney transplant operation became available for the first time ever recently, and he was given the potentially life-saving operation. Patients who receive a double transplant of a pancreas and kidney live around 10 years longer than those who simply have a kidney transplant, research has shown, so the prognosis for Mr Huang is now excellent. He will now no longer have to monitor his blood sugar levels on a daily basis and will be free from the constraints of an insulin-injecting regime.
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