Visitor tells of new drug

Press, 14 March 1984, Page 4

Visitor tells of new drug

A visiting English specialist has both glad and bad tidings for kidney patients awaiting transplants. Dr Robert Sells, the director of regional transplant services based in Liverpool, said the good news was that a drug being introduced in New Zealand could boost the success rate of kidney transplants about 25 per cent. He talked to doctors at Christchurch Hospital yesterday about the Swissdeveloped drug, cyclosporinA, used to prevent rejection of transplant organs. A hospital nephrologist, Dr Charles Swainson, said the drug could boost the success rate of kidney transplants in Christchurch from about 65 per cent

top world-ranking 85 per cent. More successes among the 25 transplants done each year might also shorten the waiting list. Cyclosporin was still in the experimental stages, but Dr Sells said more than three years use for Liverpool kidney and bone marrow transplants showed that it made a big difference, not only to success rates but also the patient’s wellbeing. Steriods now used to suppress the immuno-system of kidney transplant recipients had side-effects ranging from facial swelling to ulcers and degeneration of hip joints. Dosage needed to be carefully controlled, but Dr Sells said cyclosporin had

fewer harmful sideeffects. It was used for kidney

transplants in Auckland and in one case at Christchurch Hospital, although the patient later died from other complications. Two other bone marrow transplant patients have also been given the drug in Christchurch. The new drug was expensive but cost-effective, compared with the cost of keeping a patient on dialysis treatment or a possible second transplant. “When a kidney transplant fails, that is terrible for the patient but it is also very expensive for the service,” he said. However, Dr Sells warned that the widespread shortage of transplant donors was the real trouble facing people whose kidneys shst

down. The Liverpool service, like its New Zealand counterparts, was working at less than half capacity. “The public is on our side but I am worried about the medical profession in district hospials where there is no local (transplant) unit,” he said. District hospital doctors who dealt with tragic cases of brain death should always remember to approach the nearest transplantteam, the best people he believed to seek relatives’ permission for a transplant operation. “Unless that can happen no community can really purport to provide a reasonable service for patients with terminal renal failure, no matter how good the drugs are,” Dr Sells said.