SPLENIC TRANSPLANTATION IN A CASE OF GAUCHER'S DISEASE

A 24-year-old male with end-stage juvenile Gaucher's disease received a splenic whole-organ homograft from a non-related living donor. To judge from spleen scans the graft functioned for 40 days, its failure then being due to rejection. Although analysis of the effects of the transplanted spleen is complicated by the several other measures that had to be taken postoperatively, the graft would seem to be the most likely source of some favourable metabolic changes recorded. In the month after arrest of graft function, there was evidence of an exacerbation of the disease, and the patient died 3 months after the operation.