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A two-and-a-half-year-old girl has become Mumbai’s second-youngest organ donor, according to the Organ Transplant Coordination Center (ZTCC), after her parents donated the girl’s liver to another child after she was declared insane due to a chronic kidney disease.
The 2-year-old and 2-month-old baby, registered in 2019, was the youngest donor in Mumbai so far.
The girl, who was announced at Lilavati Hospital in Bandra, was on artificial life support. The patient is declared distraught when she suffers permanent brain damage and needs machines in order to survive.
The girl’s parents agreed to donate her organs to save the lives of other children in need, according to officials.
They were very supportive and were willing to donate her heart and lungs. Lt. Gen. (Dr.) V. Ravishankar, Chief Operations Officer (COO) at Lilavati Hospital, said when we did ECHO, we found out that due to her deteriorating health, other organs were not suitable for harvesting. Ultimately, her liver and corneas were recovered on July 19. And at Lilavati, she was the youngest organ donor, says Ravishankar.
The girl’s liver was transplanted to a five-year-old girl who was undergoing treatment at Nanavati Hospital for type 1 tyrosinemia that led to cirrhosis, portal hypertension, renal tubular acidosis (kidney damage), and bone deformity with growth failure.
Dr. Vibhor Vinayak Purkar, Director of Pediatric Hepatology and Gastroenterology at Nanavati Hospital said, “It is a rare inborn error in metabolism where there are elevated levels of tyrosine (an essential amino acid). Due to this defect, tyrosine is not metabolized in the body and elevated levels affect It affects multiple organs such as the liver, nervous system, and kidneys. Untreated, the disease leads to early liver cancer that is uniformly fatal.”
Because of her poor metabolism, she weighed only 16 kilograms, like a three-year-old child, said Dr. Anurag Shrimal, Director of Liver, Pancreas and Bowel Transplantation at Nanavati Hospital. “You wouldn’t have lived a normal life without the implant. Infact, life expectancy in such cases is limited to just a few years.”
The doctor said that with a liver transplant, she will now be able to lead a normal life with regular growth like other species of her age. However, she will have to continue taking immunosuppressants for life to avoid her body rejecting the transplanted organ.
The recipient’s father also has Hodgkin’s lymphoma – a cancer of the immune system that develops from abnormal B cells. “The family has gone through a lot. But fortunately, the child got a donor within 10 days of hospitalization, which is very rare especially for a pediatric patient.
Last month, the parents of a three-year-old boy donated his heart, liver and kidneys. He is the third youngest donor in Mumbai till date.
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