Success reported in world's first spinal disc transplants

Hong Kong and mainland surgeons have carried out the world's first human spinal disc transplants, and they and other doctors say the technique offers hope for patients with slipped discs and other degenerative conditions of the spine.

The operations were carried out more than six years ago, but were only reported this week after follow-up examinations of the recipients showed the operations had had lasting benefits.

Between March 2000 and January 2001, teams led by Keith Luk Dip-kei, of the University of Hong Kong, and Ruan Dike, of the Navy General Hospital in Beijing, operated on five patients with herniated cervical discs near the top of the spine. The patients, a woman and four men, received discs transplanted from three young women who had died in accidents.

'Our aim was to determine the feasibility, safety, and long-term clinical results of disc transplantation in human beings,' Professor Luk wrote in this week's edition of British medical journal The Lancet.

'At a minimum follow-up of five years, the neurological symptoms of all patients had improved from before surgery levels,' he wrote.

The authors concluded that with improvements in means of avoiding rejection of the donated disc by the recipient's immune system and with better surgical techniques, disc transplants could be used to treat degenerative conditions, including those lower down the spine in the lumbar, or lower back, region.

In an accompanying comment in The Lancet, Wafa Skalli and Jean Dubousset, of the biomechanics laboratory at France's National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, wrote: 'The feasibility of the technique has now been shown.'