Infections and pancreas transplants

This is partly due to the immunosuppressant medicines you need to take after your transplant. These medicines reduce the risks of you rejecting the donor pancreas, but they will also lower your immune system’s ability to fight infections. A pancreas transplant is major surgery, and all major operations have the risk of infection.

Most infections are easily treated with a few days of antibiotics.

Infections can occur in your chest, tummy, urine, around the plastic tubes inserted through your skin, or in your surgical wound.

More serious infections can spread to your blood stream. Sometimes, if there is infected fluid around the pancreas transplant or in the wound, you might need to go back to the operating theatre to have the fluid washed out.

Chest infections

Chest infections are very common after a liver transplant. Usually these infections are fairly easy to treat with a short course of antibiotics.

Urine infections

These are usually successfully treated with antibiotics.

Thorough checks are done to prevent infections being passed on from the donated organ. However, it is impossible to be completely sure that the donor and their organ are completely free of infection. Infections that can be transmitted from the donor include bacterial, viral, fungal or other infections.

Sometimes, the transplant team know that the donor was being treated for an infection at the time of their final illness. If this is an infection that is easy to treat, it may still be reasonably safe to still transplant the donor’s pancreas and give the person receiving the pancreas the correct antibiotics to treat the infection.

Learn about risks from donated pancreas

It is rare to get a serious infection such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV from a transplant. This chance is less than 1 in 1,000. Serious infections like HIV or hepatitis B or hepatitis C now have effective treatments.

CMV infection

It is more common that infections such as cytomegalovirus (CMV) are passed on with the donated organ. This infection is usually fairly straightforward to diagnose, treat and monitor.

CMV is a virus that infects more than half of healthy people and, after the initial infection, remains dormant in the body for the rest of your life. Sometimes the CMV does not come from the donor organ but is dormant within the transplant patient for years, becoming active after the transplant as a result of the patient’s weakened immune system due to anti-rejection medications.

If you are at risk of suffering from CMV infection your transplant team may give you prophylactic (preventative) treatment. If you develop CMV infection you will be prescribed antiviral medication for several weeks.

Symptoms of CMV infection

CMV infection causes fevers, fatigue and gastrointestinal symptoms with low white cell-count (neutropenia) and/or abnormal liver tests.

Treating CMV infection

If you develop CMV infection, you will be treated with antiviral medication either orally or intravenously. If you are at increased risk of CMV infection you may receive preventative (prophylactic) treatment with a medication such as valganciclovir.

There are some viruses (for example, the glandular fever virus) that can also cause you to become ill after your transplant, but these problems are less common.

Sometimes, the transplant team know that the donor was being treated for an infection at the time of their final illness. If this is an infection that is usually straightforward to treat, it may be quite safe to still transplant the donor’s organ and give you the correct antibiotics to treat the infection.

If your transplant team believe that the chances of transmitting a serious disease with the organ are much higher than 1 in 1,000, they will discuss this with you before the transplant.

Even serious infections like HIV or hepatitis B or hepatitis C now have effective treatments.

Antibiotic treatment carries risks such as allergic reactions (rashes and breathing problems), diarrhoea, and other side effects. Your transplant team will discuss these with you.