Visual status of diabetic patients after pancreatic and other organ transplantation. Preliminary report.

Ten diabetic patients with secondary manifestations of their disease have undergone pancreatic transplantation either alone (2 cases), with a hepatic transplant (1 case), or with renal transplantation (7 cases). Two patients died within a short period of the surgery. Of the remainder, five patients retained pancreatic graft function for less than 6 months and none of these has shown any change in visual function. Three patients, all with background retinopathy, retained function in the pancreatic graft for 12 months or longer. One of these patients has had some regression of retinopathy and an improvement in visual acuity. The other two have shown no change in retinopathy, except transiently associated with systemic hypertension.