Health
Surgeons Perform First Human Bladder Transplant
Surgeons in Southern California have performed the first human bladder transplant, introducing a new, potentially life-changing procedure for people with debilitating bladder conditions.
The operation was performed earlier this month by a pair of surgeons from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Southern California on a 41-year-old man who had lost much of his bladder capacity from treatments for a rare form of bladder cancer.
“I was a ticking time bomb,” the patient, Oscar Larrainzar, said on Thursday during a follow-up appointment with his doctors. “But now I have hope.”
The doctors plan to perform bladder transplants in four more patients as part of a clinical trial to get a sense of outcomes like bladder capacity and graft complications before pursuing a larger trial to expand its use.
Dr. Inderbir Gill, who performed the surgery along with Dr. Nima Nassiri, called it “the realization of a dream” for treating thousands of patients with crippling pelvic pain, inflammation and recurrent infections.
“There is no question: A potential door has been opened for these people that did not exist earlier,” said Dr. Gill, the chairman of the urology department at U.S.C.
Pushing the Envelope
Until now, most patients who undergo a bladder removal have a portion of their intestine repurposed to help them pass urine. Some receive an ileal conduit, which empties urine into a bag outside the abdomen, while others are given a so-called neobladder, or a pouch tucked inside the body that attaches to the urethra and allows patients to urinate more traditionally.
But bowel tissue, riddled with bacteria, is “inherently contaminated,” Dr. Gill said, and introducing it to the “inherently sterile” urinary tract leads to complications in up to 80 percent of patients, ranging from electrolyte imbalances to a slow reduction in kidney function. The loss of the intestinal segment can also cause new digestive issues.
Dr. Despoina Daskalaki, a transplant surgeon at Tufts Medical Center who was not involved in the new procedure, said advances in transplant medicine (from critical life-sustaining organs, like hearts and livers, to other body parts, like faces, hands, uteri and penises) had led doctors to start “pushing the envelope.”
“They’re asking: ‘Why do we have to put up with all the complications? Why don’t we try and give this person a new bladder?’” Dr. Daskalaki said.
In late 2020, Dr. Nassiri was in his fourth year of residency at the University of Southern California when he and Dr. Gill sat down in the hospital cafeteria to begin brainstorming approaches. After Dr. Nassiri began a fellowship on kidney transplantation at U.C.L.A., the two surgeons continued working together across institutions to test both robotic and manual techniques, practicing first on pigs, then human cadavers, and finally, human research donors who no longer had brain activity but maintained a heartbeat.
One of the challenges of transplanting a bladder was the complex vascular infrastructure. The surgeons needed to operate deep inside the pelvis of the donor to capture and preserve a rich supply of blood vessels so the organ could thrive inside the recipient.
“When we’re removing a bladder because of cancer, we basically just cut them. We do it in less than an hour on a near-daily basis,” Dr. Gill said. “For a bladder donation, that is a significantly higher order of technical intensity.”
The surgeons also chose to conjoin the right and left arteries — as well as the right and left veins — while the organ was on ice, so that only two connections were needed in the recipient, rather than four.
When their strategy was perfected in 2023, the two drew up plans for a clinical trial, which eventually would bring the world’s first recipient: Oscar.
An Ideal First Candidate
When Mr. Larrainzar walked into Dr. Nassiri’s clinic in April 2024, Dr. Nassiri recognized him. Almost four years earlier, Mr. Larrainzar, a husband and father of four, had been navigating end-stage kidney disease and renal cancer, and Dr. Nassiri helped remove both of his kidneys.
But Mr. Larrainzar had also survived urachal adenocarcinoma, a rare type of bladder cancer, and a surgery to resect the bladder tumor had left him “without much of a bladder at all,” Dr. Nassiri said. A normal bladder can hold more than 300 cubic centimeters of fluid; Mr. Larrainzar’s could hold 30.
Now, years of dialysis had begun to fail; fluid was building up inside his body. And with so much scarring in the abdominal region, it would have been difficult to find enough usable length of bowel to pursue another option.
“He showed up serendipitously,” Dr. Nassiri said, “but he was kind of an ideal first candidate for this.”
On a Saturday night earlier this month, Dr. Nassiri received a call about a potential bladder match for Mr. Larrainzar. He and Dr. Gill drove straight to the headquarters of OneLegacy, an organ procurement organization, in Azusa, Calif., and joined a team of seven surgeons working overnight to recover an array of organs from a donor.
The two brought the kidney and bladder to U.C.L.A., then stopped home for a shower, breakfast and a short nap. They completed the eight-hour surgery to give Mr. Larrainzar a new bladder and kidney later that day.
Dr. Nassiri said that kidney transplants can sometimes take up to a week to process urine, but when the kidney and bladder were connected inside Mr. Larrainzar, there was a great connection — “immediate output” — and his creatinine level, which measures kidney function, started to improve immediately. Mr. Larrainzar has already lost 20 pounds of fluid weight since the surgery.
The biggest risks of organ transplantation are the body’s potential rejection of the organ and the side effects caused by the mandatory immune-suppressing drugs given to prevent organ rejection. That is why, for Dr. Rachel Forbes, a transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who was not involved in the procedure, the excitement is more tempered.
“It’s obviously a technical advance,” she said, but “we already have existing options for people without bladders, and without the downside of requiring immunosuppression.” Unless a patient is — like Mr. Larrainzar — going to be on those medications anyway, “I would be a little bit nervous that you would be exchanging some complications for others,” she said.
A new bladder transplant also does not have nerve connections in the recipient, so while it works well as a storage organ, doctors did not know whether Mr. Larrainzar would ever be able to sense a full bladder, let alone hold and empty it naturally. They spoke about catheters, abdomen maneuvers and eventually developing an on-demand bladder stimulator to help with the release.
But at a follow-up appointment on Thursday morning — just two days after Mr. Larrainzar was discharged from the hospital — Dr. Nassiri removed the catheter and gave him fluids, and Mr. Larrainzar immediately felt that he could urinate.
Dr. Nassiri called it a miracle, then phoned Dr. Gill, who was in a U.S.C. operating room, and exclaimed two words: “He peed!”
“No way! What the hell?” Dr. Gill said. “My jaw is on the floor.”
After finishing the surgery, Dr. Gill drove straight to U.C.L.A. and watched Mr. Larrainzar do it again.
“Of course, this is very, very early. Let’s see how everything goes,” Dr. Gill cautioned. “But it’s the first time he has been able to pee in seven years. For all of us, this is huge.”
Mr. Larrainzar, exhausted, smiled, and Dr. Nassiri brought him a bottle of mineral water to celebrate.
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Eating processed meat like ham, sausage and bacon may be linked to a higher risk of certain types of cancer, according to new research.
While health organizations have already confirmed that processed meat can contribute to colon cancer, this study looked closer at cancers in the upper digestive tract, where the link has historically been less clear.
To understand these connections, researchers from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), one of the world’s largest long-term nutrition and cancer cohorts, tracked the health and diets of 450,112 people across Europe for an average of 14 years.
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The study group included 131,426 men and 318,686 women, according to the study’s press release.
During the follow-up period, 876 people developed stomach cancer and 215 people developed esophageal adenocarcinoma, which is cancer of the tube connecting the mouth to the stomach.
For female participants, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk of developing the disease. (iStock)
Researchers tracked where the stomach cancers grew, separating them into the upper part of the stomach near the throat and the lower part of the stomach.
The researchers also sorted the tumors into two categories based on how the cancer cells appeared under a microscope: intestinal, which forms more organized structures, and diffuse, in which the cells are more scattered throughout the tissue.
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After adjusting for other lifestyle factors, the researchers found that for every extra 30 grams of processed meat a person ate per day, their overall risk of stomach cancer went up by 9%. Eating that same extra 30 grams a day was also linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma.
A standard single slice of regular deli-sliced ham or lunch meat averages around 28 grams, according to USDA data and nutritional tracking databases.
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken and turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach. (iStock)
An extra 20 grams of white meat, such as chicken or turkey, was linked to a 12% higher risk of cancer in the main body of the stomach, the researchers noted.
The study also revealed differences between men and women. For male participants, only processed meat showed a clear, statistically significant link to a higher risk of stomach cancer. For female participants, however, eating both processed meat and white meat was linked to an increased risk.
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These findings align with global health benchmarks, particularly those established by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
The agency has long classified processed meat as a known human carcinogen, primarily due to its strong, well-documented links to colorectal cancer.
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However, health organizations have also consistently pointed to a potential, yet less definitive, relationship between these meats and cancers of the stomach.
Eating 30 grams of processed meat a day, or the equivalent to one slice of ham, was linked to a 13% higher risk of esophageal adenocarcinoma. (iStock)
Further scientific investigation is needed to confirm the findings and to account for other underlying risk factors, such as certain stomach infections, which could interact with dietary habits.
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A key limitation of the study is its reliance on self-reported diets, which can sometimes lead to inaccuracies in how participants recall their meat consumption over time, the researchers noted.
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The findings were published in the International Journal of Cancer.
Fox News Digital reached out to the researchers requesting comment.
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Yoga is known to boost relaxation, strength and flexibility – and now a new study has found the practice could improve cancer survivors’ quality of life.
A randomized trial led by the University of Rochester Medical Center found that a four-week yoga program significantly reduced insomnia, fatigue, anxiety and mood disturbances after cancer treatment.
The findings were presented last week at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago.
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The study was conducted across multiple U.S. community cancer care sites, including 410 adult cancer survivors averaging 54 years of age. Around 75% were breast cancer survivors, and none of them had practiced yoga regularly within the prior three months.
A randomized trial led by the University of Rochester Medical Center found that a four-week yoga program significantly reduced insomnia, fatigue, anxiety and mood disturbances in cancer survivors. (iStock)
The participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Half of them received only standard survivorship care without the yoga, while the other half received standard care and were also enrolled in the Yoga for Cancer Survivors (YOCAS) program.
As part of the YOCAS program, the survivors completed two instructor-led 75-minute yoga sessions each week, including 18 Gentle Hatha yoga and Restorative yoga poses, breathing exercises and mindfulness training.
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Based on questionnaires completed by the patients, the survivors in the yoga group experienced “moderate-to-large” reductions in overall mood disturbance, “small-to-medium” reductions in anxiety and “medium-to-large” reductions in fatigue, the study found.
The improvements in mood and fatigue appeared to be linked to yoga’s beneficial effect on sleep quality, according to the researchers.
As part of the YOCAS program, the survivors completed two instructor-led 75-minute yoga sessions each week, including 18 Gentle Hatha yoga and Restorative yoga poses, breathing exercises and mindfulness training. (iStock)
“This indicates that cancer survivors have an option to alleviate these cancer-related side effects at the same time, without adding another drug,” lead investigator Yuri Choi, PhD, of the Wilmot Cancer Institute, University of Rochester Medical Center, in Rochester, New York, told Fox News Digital.
The study did not reveal any major safety concerns or serious adverse events related to the yoga practice.
“This indicates that cancer survivors have an option to alleviate these cancer-related side effects at the same time, without adding another drug.”
The study did have some limitations, chiefly that the findings are preliminary and have not yet been peer-reviewed for a medical publication.
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“The sample in our clinical trial was relatively homogeneous, with most participants being women (96%), breast cancer patients (75%), Caucasian (93%), and having some college or higher education (82%),” noted Choi.
“We are adapting our intervention to reach all cancer patients and survivors, including the creation of a mobile app to reach people in rural communities.”
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The research also excluded patients with metastatic cancer (whose disease had spread to other parts of the body).
The total study was only four weeks, so more research is needed to determine long-term benefits.
If the findings are confirmed by peer-reviewed publications, this could lead to recommendations for structured yoga programs as a non-drug supportive therapy for cancer survivors, the researchers noted. (iStock)
If the findings are confirmed by peer-reviewed publications, this could lead to recommendations for structured yoga programs as a non-drug supportive therapy for cancer survivors, the researchers noted.
Some yoga studios may use different names for Gentle Hatha and Restorative yoga, such as Foundations Yoga or Healing Yoga, Choi noted.
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“Survivors should also look for certified yoga instructors who have experience working with cancer patients/survivors or individuals with other challenging health conditions,” the researcher advised. “They should not be afraid to ask their oncology team for referrals to qualified instructors in their community.”
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Choi also noted that the research did not reveal whether other types of yoga, such as heated-room or rigorous-flow yoga, are safe or beneficial for cancer survivors.
The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute.
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