title: [From the advent of total parenteral nutrition to the first successful pediatric intestinal graft in France].
abstract: In his opening remarks to Academy of Medicine meeting devoted to Chronic Intestinal Failure and Transplantation on 7 February 2012, Bernard Launois recalled that the first successful intestinal transplantation worldwide was performed in 1987, in France, at Hôpital Necker-Enfants-Malades in Paris. Having had the pleasure of leading this great adventure, and being modestly (and almost by accident) its initiator, Denys Pellerin recalls the circumstances, the difficulties and the vicissitudes of the successive phases. The early hopes and successes of parenteral nutrition in the management of long-term short-bowel syndrome were followed by setbacks and a growing realization of the limits of this approach. Intestinal transplantation was the only way out of this impasse. Uninterrupted research conducted simultaneously in the clinic and on piglets, drawing on the expertise of multiple teams grouped together at Necker-Enfants-Malades, would ultimately lead, after 18 years of intense efforts, to a fragile but encouraging success on 21 March 1987, unanimously recognized as the first-ever successful pediatric intestinal transplant.
authors.affiliation: Académie nationale de médecine. dpeller@noos.fr
authors.forename: Denys
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pellerin
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D005602:France; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007422:Intestines / Q000637:transplantation*; D010289:Parenteral Nutrition, Total / Q000266:history*; D014180:Transplantation / Q000266:history