Organ Transplants

Michelle Carew, who in November was found to be suffering a fatal form of leukemia and has been unable to find a bone marrow transplant donor who matches her genetic makeup, will undergo a cord blood transplant operation Friday. Friday's operation, an emerging therapy for cancer patients, will involve an infusion of stem cells from an umbilical cord. The decision to undergo the cord transplant operation came when her physician, Dr.

University of Miami researchers said Wednesday that they may have found a greatly improved way to perform transplants that can both free diabetics from their dependence on daily insulin shots and minimize the use of powerful antirejection drugs.

Michelle Carew, the 18-year-old daughter of baseball great Rod Carew, was recovering Friday after doctors performed a rare type of blood transfusion to battle the leukemia that threatens her life. The young woman underwent the 45-minute procedure at Childrens Hospital of Orange County surrounded by family members, who to no avail had waged a public campaign to find a suitable bone marrow donor.

After nearly 25 years of marital happiness, Jeff and Rosemarie Litoff are considering a divorce. But not because of the usual problems that break up families. Their fight is against a degenerative disease that is gradually weakening Jeff's heart. Last month, the 50-year-old appliance repairman was told by his doctors that without a heart transplant he had less than a year to live.

The Clinton administration, recognizing the potential in the experimental field of animal-to-human transplants, proposed strict safeguards Friday to protect against the transmission of serious animal viruses and other microbes into people. "This is a tightrope," said Dr. David A. Kessler, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, which developed the guidelines along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

Sometime this fall, English researchers will take the heart of a genetically engineered pig and implant it in a human whose own heart is dying. It will not be the first time surgeons have attempted to use an animal organ in a human. But it may well be the first time such a transplant succeeds because researchers have given the pig heart human genes that make it less likely to be rejected.

When Claire Sylvia woke up from a heart-and-lung transplant operation at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1988, she was craving new and strange things--beer and chicken nuggets. She began dreaming about a young man with the initials T.L. In her sleep, she kissed him and as their lips met, she sucked his entire body--ghost-style--into her own. Convinced that her new organs may have triggered profound change within her, Sylvia set out to discover the identity of her donor.

When the parents of a 7-year-old Northern California boy murdered in Italy allowed his organs to be given to people who would have died without them, it was an inspirational example of the gift of life that can come only from tragedy. Organ transplant--with the partial exception of living related donors for kidneys--is the only medical procedure in which a person can live only if another dies.

"Here we go again," 4-year-old kidney dialysis patient Adam Chambers said with an air of quiet acceptance as his catheter dressing was changed Tuesday at the St. Joseph Hospital Renal Center in Orange. The Anaheim preschooler, who has a congenital kidney disorder, cried a little bit as the adhesive tape was pulled off his chest, but he soon returned to playing with his toys as he waited for the dialysis machine to do what his one remaining kidney can't--cleanse his blood.

One-year survival rates for organ-transplant recipients have improved in all categories, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. The latest statistics, released recently by the Department of Health and Human Services, show the greatest gains in lung transplants: About 68% of those who receive transplanted lungs survive at least one year, nearly a 15% increase.