12-Year-Old’s Organ Donation Sends pancreas to Research to Fight Type 1 Diabetes
by Transplant News
USA: Twelve-year-old Dylan Scalina, who lived with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and type 1 diabetes, suffered a catastrophic brain bleed after feeling unwell following Halloween trick-or-treating and was taken to the hospital, where he later died. The sudden medical emergency and fatal outcome unfolded quickly after he began complaining of symptoms that led his family to seek urgent care.
In the wake of his death the family chose to authorize organ donation, a decision that will direct Dylan’s organs to transplantation and research. Medical teams will use his donated tissues and organs to benefit other patients, and those involved describe the potential for his gift to touch a very large number of lives, including recipients awaiting lifesaving transplants.
Central to the family’s request was Dylan’s wish to contribute to a cure for type 1 diabetes. His pancreas has been designated for scientific study rather than for immediate clinical implantation, and will be made available to researchers working on therapeutic advances and long-term solutions for the autoimmune disease that he had battled. That arrangement places transplantation and research side by side: organs for recipients and biological material for investigators pursuing new treatments.
Hospitals and transplant coordinators are processing the donations and facilitating transfer to recipients and laboratories. The family has framed their decision as a means to extend Dylan’s impact beyond his short life, channeling the medical tragedy into a coordinated donation that supports transplantation and diabetes research. Medical and research communities will now move forward with the organs and pancreas provided, with the dual goals of saving lives through transplant and advancing scientific work aimed at type 1 diabetes.
