NEW YORK (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- There are more than 106,000 people
waiting for a liver transplant and less than 15,000 available donors.
Doctors want to turn those numbers around by offering living donors a
less-invasive surgery. A new transplant helped an entire family survive the
scare of their life.
They share the same smile, the same sense of humor -- and now, the same
liver.
"I remember I was thinking at the beginning, this is crazy!" Lilian Chow
told Ivanhoe. "This is like science fiction that this can't actually work!"
Lilian's daughter Lila was born with a disease that damaged her liver.
Surgery at two months didn't fix the problem, so she needed a transplant.
Her dad Jim was first in line to donate.
"Number one, Lilian had already suffered through the delivery, so I figured
let me get a hole cut in me," Jim told Ivanhoe. "It's my turn, my turn for
some pain."
They turned to Dr. Benjamin Samstein, who is one of the first surgeons in
the United States to perform a minimally invasive liver transplant from
adult to child.
"There's one center in Korea performing this, and the procedure was
developed in France," Dr. Samstein, surgical director of the Living Donor
Liver Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia in New
York, told Ivanhoe.
Instead of a 25-centimeter cut from chest to belly button, surgeons make
five 1-inch cuts across the donor's stomach and one small cut across the
lower abdomen to retrieve the organ.
"We basically place a bag inside put the liver piece in the bag pull the bag
out, then quickly bring the liver over to the baby," Dr. Samstein explained.
Fifteen percent of Jim's liver is now growing and thriving in his daughter.
"Her eyes started clearing," Jim said. "Her face started clearing. The
jaundice went away."
Jim responded well, too. Instead of the traditional transplant where donors
spend six weeks laid up, Jim was back on his feet in about two weeks --
especially important for a family dealing with two patients.
"Between the two surgeries, it's all a fog," wife Lilian said. "It's very
stressful."
Lila doesn't miss a beat, but her dad will always remind her, she's carrying
around a piece of him.
"It's good leverage for when she's a teenager: 'Well, you know I can always
take it back!'"
The piece of liver will grow as Lila grows, and it should be normal size
when she's adult. Surgeons say patients who receive livers from a living
donor do better but only 5 percent of liver transplants use this method
because it takes such a toll on the donor. Doctors hope offering a
minimally-invasive approach will lead to more living donors.
