[9458]
Frequent clotting inside of plastic grafts. Rptr's son was born in 1959. At the age of 16, he received a bovine graft through which he received his dialysis treatments. The graft remained implanted for approx five yrs without problems. Rptr stated that the graft did not clot once in those five yrs. Approx four yrs after receiving the bovine graft, rptr's son received a kidney transplant. The transplanted kidneys functioned properly for approx 12 yrs and three months. At that time a "plastic" graft was implanted. During the next 22 months, rptr's son was hospitalized 11 times because of "clotting in the graft. " he was recently hospitalized on 8/6/93, 8/26/93 and 9/9/93. He is still hospitalized as of 9/14/93. He is in icu as a result of complications which occurred in the or during treatment of the last episode of clotting. Rptr's son now receives dialysis treatments. He is in a unit of approx 20 pts. Rptr stated that at one time, 8 of the 20 or so pts in the unit were hospitalized for clotting in their plastic grafts. The treatment for this problem is to either declot the graft or replace it if declotting is not possible. The area around the graft becomes infected much more frequently than with the bovine graft. Rptr stated that when she inquired about the possibility of her son receiving another bovine graft rather than a plastic graft, she was told that a) bovine grafts are too expensive and b) bovine grafts have been banned by fda.
Patient Sequence No: 1, Text Type: D, B5