Brain-dead boy's heart, liver and kidneys save three lives
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Heart, liver and kidneys of a young boy who was declared brain-dead under were successfully transplanted into three different recipients at three hospitals in Japan.
Surgeons at Osaka University Hospital said they transplanted the heart into a girl under age 10 Friday, making her the youngest heart recipient in Japan.
Doctors at the National Center for Child Health and Development in Tokyo, finished transplanting the liver into another girl under 10 at 3 a.m. Saturday, while a woman in her 60s received the boy's kidneys at Toyama Prefectural Central Hospital at around 2 a.m, the Japan Times reported.
The 7-and-a-half hour kidney transplant in the city of Toyama took longer than expected because special care had to be taken with the organs in light of the boy's young age, surgeon Chikashi Seto said.
It is the first time a donor under 6 has been declared brain-dead since the revised Organ Transplant Law took effect in July 2010 to cover those younger than 15, toughening the criteria for children under the age of 6.
The boy was pronounced brain-dead at Toyama University Hospital on Thursday after suffering cardiopulmonary arrest that deprived his brain of oxygen, and surgical teams from the three medical institutions extracted his heart, liver and kidneys the following day.
The eyeballs were also harvested and the Toyama Eye Bank is searching for a recipient for the corneas.
The girl who received the heart was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, or an enlarged heart, while the liver recipient's own liver had failed.
The woman who got the kidneys had chronic glomerulonephritis, a renal disease that inflames the blood vessels.
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