North Texas Surgeons Split One Donor liver To Save Two Transplant Patients
USA: A two-year-old girl, Luna Fuentes, was rushed from persistent jaundice and pale stool to a pediatric transplant program after doctors diagnosed end-stage liver failure caused by biliary atresia and warned that roughly three-quarters of her liver appeared cirrhotic. Luna spent more than a year on the national transplant waiting list where finding a suitably small organ proved exceptionally difficult, until a call on November 18 offered a potential match from an adult donor.
Surgeons at children’s Health in Dallas deployed a rare split-liver transplant technique that allowed one donated adult liver to be divided for two recipients. pediatric transplant surgeon Dr. Young performs the procedure at a center that is one of about ten pediatric hospitals nationally to offer it, and Dr. Kwon carried out the division of the organ, allocating a smaller segment to Luna and the remaining portion to an adult woman. The team reported performing 27 such pediatric procedures in the past 13 to 14 months, and estimates place the nation’s annual caseload at roughly one hundred split-liver operations.
The operation and hours of waiting were tense for Luna’s parents, who described severe anxiety while the surgery proceeded. Clinicians observed an immediate clinical turnaround in Luna after she returned from the operating room, with appetite and energy returning quickly. She has experienced two episodes of rejection since the transplant, which the medical team brought under control, and physicians assess her long-term outlook as excellent with expectations of a normal, healthy life.
Luna’s family expressed deep gratitude to the donor family for making the choice that allowed two people to benefit from a single gift. The hospital’s organ transplant wall bears hundreds of names, including Luna’s, and staff credited recent surgical advances and the willingness of donors and families for changing outcomes for young transplant recipients.
