Now, we jump on another decade to the end of the 1960s, when there were some major advances in transplant surgery. The first pancreas transplantation was performed in 1966, in Minnesota, in the United States. A pancreas, along with a kidney and a duodenum, were transplanted into a 28-year-old woman. The patient was, as is the case in most instances of pancreatic transplant, a sufferer of diabetes. Her blood sugar levels decreased immediately after transplantation. Anyway, I’ll let you discover more there, if that’s the area you opt for.
069
Unit 7 Listening 3
A Listen to the rest of the talk and answer the questions. Voice: Right, in 1967, the first liver and heart transplants were performed. The liver transplant was performed by a surgical team in Colorado. It should be stressed here that success is defined as one-year post- transplantation survival – a number of transplants that ultimately failed to sustain life had previously been attempted. The world’s first human heart transplant was performed in Cape Town, South Africa, in the same year, on a man called Louis Washkansky – this is him on the screen. Less than 50 years later, 3,500 heart transplants are undertaken worldwide every year.
OK – lung transplants. This is complicated as, for so long, attempts failed due to bodily rejection of the donated organ. As early as the 1940s, doctors showed that the procedure was possible, but the first operation didn’t take place until 1963 and then the patient lived for only 18 days. For the next 15 years, multiple attempts at lung transplantation failed because of rejection and problems with bronchial healing. It was only after the invention of the heart– lung machine, coupled with the development of immunosuppressive drugs, that a lung could be transplanted with a reasonable chance of patient recovery. The first properly successful operation involved a heart and lung transplant, performed at Stanford University, in the United States, in 1981. Over the next 15 years or so, developments
revolved around further successes with the organs we’ve already mentioned. It was in 1998 – not long ago at all – that we move into what some might think of as futuristic territory, when the first hand transplant was carried out. Again, there had previously been many failed attempts at the surgery over a long period – the first serious attempt was as long ago as 1944. Even this success in 1998 was only partial. The recipient failed to follow the prescribed post-operative drug and physiotherapy programme and in 2001 the transplanted hand was removed at his request. A year later, a fully successful operation was concluded – the
recipient has almost normal use of his transplanted hand today. Look at the image here – I’m not sure if this illustrates either of the cases I’ve mentioned, but it shows you just how mammoth an operation this is. In 2005, the first partial face transplant was a success in France. Previously, a patient’s own face had been reattached and you can find out more about that if you want to. I warn you, the details are a bit grizzly! Two thousand and five saw the first case of a donor transplant. Isabelle Dinoire – this is her – underwent surgery to replace her original face that had been ravaged by her dog. A triangle of face tissue from a brain-dead human’s nose and mouth was grafted onto the patient. In 2007, a report 18 months after the transplant stated that the patient was happy with the results, but that the journey had been difficult, especially with respect to the response of her immune system. In 2010, the surgery moved on to a new level. A team of 30 Spanish doctors carried out the first full face transplant on a man injured in a shooting accident. So, there we have it. I’ll finish there and you decide what you want to know more about. As I say, we’ll be looking at each type of transplant in more detail, but if you have done some research yourself in preparation, you’ll …
070 Unit 7 Writing 1
C Listen to a doctor talking. Compare what she says with your ideas in Exercise B. Interviewer: Now, the terms medical tourism, medical travel and health tourism were initially coined by the media. Of course the concept existed, but the labelling made far more people aware, and those terms have become quite pejorative. So, would you say this development in tourism is all negative?
Doctor: Oh, no. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s all negative. I think there are concerns, but not all negative … no.
Interviewer: Before we go into that, can you tell me what medical care really means? Are we talking about cosmetic surgery, for example, that doctors in the patient’s own country wouldn’t perform?
Doctor: No, … well, sometimes yes …, but generally no. People are travelling abroad to get operations done more quickly. There are long waiting lists in many countries and this is a way to queue-jump. Let’s say that someone wants a hip replacement. They could be waiting up to a year in their own country. They look round and see that they can have the operation wherever they like. What makes it even more attractive is that it can be combined with a holiday. People choose places where the operation costs very little and then spend two or three weeks on the beach convalescing.
Interviewer: Can patients have any kind of surgery? Pathway to IELTS 6.0 213
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