Diabetics can survive heart transplant

Diabetic people who have problems with their health can survive the heart transplant procedure almost as well as non-diabetic people. That is the conclusion of a recent study that makes the point that diabetics should not be disqualified from transplant waiting lists on grounds of their condition.
The study was conducted at the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas . The chairman of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Dr. Ring, said: “It actually reinforces the approach that we’ve taken for 20 years, that diabetes without major complications … does not exclude transplantation.”
Diabetics in America looking for heart transplants currently have to rely on individual rules depending on the heart transplant centre they attend. The president-elect of the American Diabetes Associatio, Dr. Buse, believes that automatic denial of heart transplants for diabetic people are becoming less common.
The results of the study were published in the journal of the American Heart Associatio, called Circulation. The study involved almost 4,000 people suffering from diabetes who had heart transplants between 1995 and 2005.
Along with diabetes becoming more common, heart failure is also increasing. When a patient has heart failure, transplants can be the only solution. One author of the study, Mark Russo from Columbia University, concluded: “Prior to this it was unclear whether diabetes mattered and what it meant if they had complications related to their diabetes.”