Transplantation Books

My wife has been getting treatment for a rare and very aggressive form of lymphoma. It has responded to treatment, however, her body will not accept further standard chemo therapy treatments and we are left with several options, including an autolgous stem cell transplant.

The book is rather basic and covers the bare material needed to understand what will happen during the transplant. I didn't find it particularly dificult to read and it has a significant amount of very valuable information. It deals with touchy issues such as pain management and post transplant sex in an open and forthright manner. It also provides information on how to deal with insurance company rejection.

My one complaint about the book is that is was published several years ago and treatments are changing rapidly with new solutions being put in place evry day. Some of the material is outdated and the book needs to be updated to include newer information.

Overall, I would suggest this book to anyone who is facing to option of this type of transpalant. It doesn't provide all the answers, but does give a good overview and opens up areas to be discussed with your doctor.

I was my sisters caregiver when she had a stem cell transplant for ovarian cancer and the family was given this book from the hospital to read. The book really did not go into enough depth on the reality of the transplant and what to expect from it for the patient and the family. My seventy five year old mother had trouble understanding it. I felt this book was "sugar coating" what really happens physically and emotionally to the patient, caregiver and family members.

As I write this review, I am preparing to share the author's experience: I am donating a kidney to a friend who has suffered kidney failure. So much of what Ms Chabot-Long experienced I am now experiencing. The decision to give up a kidney is a very emotional one and I can relate to much of what the author went through. I discovered that she had the same experience that I am going through in that it reached the point where she would have been disappointed if for any reason, she could not have done it. I wanted a good, vivid account of what awaits me in the future and Ms Chabot-Long provides such an account. I feel that I have been clued in as to what awaits me both physically and emotionally. I know that the recovery from the surgery is likely to be painful and I have been given a good firsthand account of what I can expect. I was charmed and moved by her description of her family and what they went through in supporting her. The support I have been receiving has made me very emotional. The author is not a professional writer and it is clear that she did not have a professional editor. She and her husband published the book themselves so the writing style is not necessarily smooth and contains grammatical errors. However, I can easily overlook that since the book hits home as to my personal needs. Furthermore, the author did a fair amount of research and provides technical information in a style understandable to lay people. I recommend this book to anyone who wants good. reliable information on what a kidney donor goes through.

As a librarian and a fairly sophisticated user of information, I was indeed pleased to locate this title. My brother had just started dialysis and our family was looking into the pros and cons of living versus cadaver donation. A first-person account of the transplant experience from the point of view of the donor and the recipient was just the sort of introductory material my brother and I were looking for.

Unfortunately, what useful information one could locate on end-stage renal disease, dialysis, the transplantation decision, the surgery or its aftermath was buried under pages and pages of irrelevant detail about the author's family, or was mired in hopelessly inelegant prose, full of glaring errors of grammar and tense. The excerpt of the book that follows the editorial reviews of this title is a perfect example of why clear and concise writing and careful editing are so important.

Given the subtitle "a page from the life of a living donor" one would certainly expect a certain level of personal detail to accompany the facts. Yet Ms. Chabot-Long's account reads like the breathless entries in a teenager's " dear diary." And do we really need to know (over several pages) why it took so long for her to be discharged from the hospital? Hint: this essential bodily function often slows down after surgery. You really don't want to go there.

This account would have been much better if it had been presented as an article in a magazine. It would have forced the author or her editor to stress facts and to highlight the decision-making process that her family used when they faced this crisis.

My brother and I skimmed the book in about an hour and were much better served by the articles I found in reference books, in periodicals, and on the web.

This has some nice early chapters on normal marrow, but as a general pathologist, I don't find this text nearly as useful as Foucar's book.

immunology
immunogenicity of bone and cartilage
molecular and cell biology of bone transplant
rejection

An interesting look at what makes a man like Chris Barnard tick. A chilling experience to see how a man can put human suffering out of his mind in order to experiment on humans when he was no longer satisfied with using animals. A man adrift, unable to secure bonds on earth with wife, children or co-workers, Chris does write with surprising honesty about what drove him to do the things he did (like attaching a second head on a live dog just for fun!). An interesting read if you have the stomach for it.

This is a good small pocket book written by a Liver Transplant surgeon from Univ. of Minnesota. It is easy read and you can quickly go through the whole book in 2-3 days. It is good for getting a good overview of the issues surrounding liver transplantation, especially if you are doing a rotation on a transplant team. The downside, however, is that a significant amount of information is outdated and a lot of new information is not there. I therefore, recommend using this book for only an initial general outline and using other books such as Killenberg's "medical care of the liver transplant patient" for further reading. Other sources for most recent information would be Uptodate, recent journal articles as well as society guidelines.

the videos accompany this book is on amature level, I hoped the auther(s) have spent a little more effort on providing a more proffesional videos, it's just like they have collected home made videos provided by multiple physicians

My son gave this GRAPHIC NOVEL to me as a gift about a year ago. I do not usually read graphic novels although I was fond of the Sandman series in my early college years. I was tired today and picked this from my pile of unread books on a whim; I read it swiftly from cover to cover, including the introduction. It certainly was enjoyable in a lighthearted way and the illustrations were fun (although I find it tiresome that the men were, for the most part, misshapen and unattractive while the women were anatomically impossible in typical comic book fashion). Would I have bought this for myself? No...but it made for an interesting half hour! One thing about the words--the ones that were supposed to represent foreign accents were different, with additions to the letter 'o' that made it easier to distinguish the speaker's affect from possible type-o's (no pun intended). Perhaps this is standard practice in the comics industry; I would not know. I have not seen the film which inspired the graphic novel but I think I've seen enough of Bruce Campbell already...

While this movie does have some funny moments. I would have to say that I did not like it as well as I thought I would. I found it hard to follow in some places and the film seemed to drag on for hours. I am a very big fan of Bruce Campbell, but this I feel was not one of his best projects.

Simpler procedures than the ones described in Volume I. I guess that it might be useful for the ones who wants to learn to become an aesthetis surgeon, although the infomation provided is still quite limited.

The author could have spent more time and pages describing the complications and pitfalls of the procedures described instead of promoting himself again and again.

The author promotes his own products at the last portion of the book.

There are many repeat contents and pictures in the adjuvant chapter from the 1st volumn.

The DVD is a Zone II format. It cannot be played in the US unless you have a European DVD machine.

Overall, the artist of the book is the best in the business. The content of the book is too pale in comparison.

This book is attractive at first sight with it's glossy paper and high quality drawings. But the book missed out on the most important thing for a book: essence. It sets a goal to educate the non-professionals, i.e., the surgeons who are not in the aesthetic surgery business yet. But the techniques described, except for the upper blepharoplasty and the adjuvant therapies, could never be copied by a non-specialty trained surgeon. In other words, the book missed both the professionals and the wannabes.

Additionally, the author failed to point out the complications, pitfalls, complexities, and difficulties of the procedures. It's like this text itself is a big trap for "novice" aesthetic surgeons to jump in. A responsible educator would have adopted a more responsible approach.

The author wants to standardize the aesthetic procedures for the world, yet he presents only the procedures carrying his own name, the "Mang Method". It's a test of the tolerance of the internatonal aesthetic surgery society indeed.

The included DVD is in Zone II format which means that it cannot be played in a DVD machine with the US Format.

The book may be a commercial success, but it failed in serving its real purpose--teaching.

Cohen presents an interesting view of an options market, or organ selling. If your already convinced this is the way to go you'll love the book. If your not so sure, Cohen's weak arguements and strange logic will not do much to persuade you. Yet, he does give a comprehensive explination of what it is all about.