Danielle Scheetz
Dr. Jason Wellen.
By Kay Quinn, Healthbeat Reporter
KSDK -- It's being called a life-changing operation for some of the 14 million people with Type 1 diabetes.
Surgeons in St. Louis are performing pancreas transplants on carefully selected patients. And in almost all cases, the new organs return the blood sugar to normal immediately.
Frequent blood sugar tests have always been a lifeline for 19-year-old Danielle Scheetz. For unknown reasons, the pancreas in people with Type 1 diabetes stops producing insulin. The result: sugar in the blood that should be around 100, soars to dangerously high levels.
"It was always in the 300s, which is not good," says Scheetz.
Danielle was five-years-old when she was diagnosed. By high school, her kidneys had started to fail, even with the insulin injections she was taking.
"The combination of a Type 1 diabetic and renal failure is a very bad combination, with about a 30 percent, five year survival," says Dr. Jason Wellen, a kidney and pancreas transplant surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine and director of the Barnes-Jewish kidney-pancreas transplant program.
That's when doctors first started talking about the possibility of a kidney transplant to save her life.
But even new kidneys in patients like Danielle can be destroyed unless surgeons take another important step, and transplant a new pancreas at the same time. Danielle and her Dad got the call for her new organs in October of last year.
"She said there's a transplant waiting for you and we both started crying," says Danielle.
"I wouldn't say it's going to be a cure for all Type 1 diabetics," says Dr. Wellen, "but for the right type of patients it's an unbelievable life changing surgery.
Patients trade a lifetime of insulin for a lifetime of drugs to suppress their immune system. But the results are almost instantaneous.
"Every patient that we've done, from the minute the organ is put into the belly in the operating room, they have not required a single unit of insulin," says Dr. Wellen.
Danielle's diabetes is gone, her new pancreas and kidney are healthy. She's now studying to be a nurse, but still checks her insulin daily on doctor's advice.
"I kind of hold my breath just hoping that it's still good," says Danielle. "But it's so weird to see those good numbers all the time."
Again, pancreas transplants are only an option for those with uncontrolled blood sugar. But about 12 to 15 hundred such operations are done every year in this country.
Some have asked whether pancreas transplants are an option for those with pancreatic cancer. But they're not, because the drugs that suppress the immune system would allow the cancer to grow out of control.
KSDK
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