title: Follow-up of secondary diabetic complications after pancreas transplantation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Successful pancreas transplantation restores physiologic glycemic and metabolic control. Its effects on overall patient survival (especially for simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplantation) are clear-cut. We herein review the available literature to define the impact of pancreas transplantation on chronic complications of diabetes mellitus.
  
  
  RESULTS
  With longer-term follow-up, wider patient populations, and more accurate investigational tools (clinical and functional tests, noninvasive imaging, histology, and molecular biology), growing data show that successful pancreas transplantation may slow the progression, stabilize, and even favor the regression of secondary complications of diabetes, both microvascular and macrovascular, in a relevant proportion of recipients.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients who are referred for pancreas transplantation usually suffer from advanced chronic complications of diabetes, which have classically been deemed irreversible. A successful pancreas transplantation is often able to slow the progression, stabilize, and even reverse many microvascular and macrovascular complications of diabetes. Growing clinical evidence shows that the expected natural history of long-term diabetic complications can be significantly modified by successful pancreas transplantation.
authors.affiliation: Division of General and Transplant Surgery, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. u.boggi@med.unipi.it
authors.forename: Ugo
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Boggi
authors.forename: Carlo Maria
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Rosati
authors.forename: Piero
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Marchetti
mesh_terms: D048909:Diabetes Complications / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality / Q000601:surgery*; D003925:Diabetic Angiopathies / Q000601:surgery; D003928:Diabetic Nephropathies / Q000601:surgery; D003929:Diabetic Neuropathies / Q000601:surgery; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D016035:Pancreas Transplantation / Q000379:methods / Q000401:mortality