Many might think type 1 diabetes is a “disease of childhood”, but new research has found it has similar prevalence in adults.
Monthly Archives: November 2017
20 Habits That Make Holiday Stress Worse
Avoid these common anxieties to stay merry all season long.
Portsmouth hospital missed lung cancer cases
A national review is taking place after the failings were uncovered by the health watchdog.
Going swimmingly: Biotemplates breakthrough paves way for cheaper nanobots
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More mammoth bones recovered from Michigan farm where skull, tusks and dozens of intact bones of an ice age mammoth were found
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Sonic Kayaks: Environmental monitoring and experimental music by citizens
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Care homes: Public ‘pay unfair fees to plug £1bn shortfall’
Charges after death and over-the-top upfront fees for self-funders highlighted by the markets watchdog.
Cardiff University Down’s syndrome vision research prize
Pioneering research helps children with Down’s syndrome overcome vision problems – and wins an award.
Health24.com | World first: Skin from twin saves man with 95% burns
A man who had suffered burns over 95% of his body, putting him on the verge of death, was saved by a skin transplant from his identical twin in a world-first operation, French doctors said.
The 33-year-old man, identified only as Franck, received skin grafted from his brother Eric’s skull, back and thighs.
Less risk of rejection
Receiving a transplant from a genetically identical twin eliminates the risk of seeing the recipient’s body reject “foreign” material from an unrelated donor.
Usually in burn cases, the skin of a deceased donor is used, and the donor skin is typically rejected within weeks.
That is usually enough time for new skin to start growing or to be harvested from elsewhere on the patient’s body.
Twin-on-twin skin transplants have been done before, but this was the first to cover such a large surface area, said Maurice Mimoun, a surgeon at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris, where the procedure was done.
Severe case
The previous record for such transplants involved a case where about 68% of the victim’s body was burned.
Franck was admitted to hospital in September last year after being burned in a work accident, and the first graft from his twin was done a week later, followed by about a dozen procedures.
Four-and-a-half months after his admission, Franck left hospital for a rehabilitation centre.
“It doesn’t hurt any more,” Franck said, noting that he had recently stopped taking painkillers.
“Today he is at home with his partner; he can get on with his activities, his face has healed well,” Mimoun told AFP.
The skin’s epidermis, tough and water-resistant, protects the body from dehydration, injury and infection.
Image credit: iStock
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