Mom gives slice of own liver to save her baby
Infant the youngest to undergo pioneering ‘living-donor’ operation
NINE-MONTH-OLD Connor Mollison plays with the multiple tubes connected to his tiny body as he lies in his hospital bed. It will be years before he knows and understands the pioneering surgery he underwent a week ago.
But as his family and the surgeon who performed the lifesaving liver transplant know, the operation brought hope not only to Connor, but also to others waiting for an organ donor.
Connor is the youngest patient to have undergone a “livingdonor” transplant at the Donald Gordon Medical Centre at the University of the Witwatersrand. Connor’s new liver was grafted from his mother, 37-year-old Annabel Mollison.
The procedure was pioneered in the US in the late 1980s and is now widely used as an alternative to orthodox liver transplants.
South African surgeon Dr Jean Botha spent more than a decade training and working at the University of Nebraska in Omaha before returning to the medical centre last year to join its transplant team. Since the living-donor programme launched in March, three such procedures have been performed. Connor is the latest recipient.
Botha hopes the surgeries will motivate others to consider the option, because it would take significant pressure off the donor list. The average waiting time for a person to receive a liver from a donor who has died is between three and six months.
Botha said: “The liver is the only organ that regenerates. You can take a piece [from an adult] and put that into the child. The liver will grow with the child and the part you took from the adult will grow back. It doesn’t grow like a lizard’s tail — the piece you leave behind just gets bigger.”
The medical centre has done 240 “regular” liver transplants, 40 of which were for children.
Annabel Mollison, a doctor living in Durban, said Connor and his twin brother, Keegan, were born prematurely. At three months, Connor developed jaundice.
“He was getting a big tummy and going yellow. We took him to the hospital and doctors thought it was a blocked gall bladder,” she said.
The liver will grow with the child and the part taken from the adult will grow back
On Christmas Eve, Connor had a three-hour operation, known as a Kasai procedure, in which surgeons tried to improve the baby’s bile drainage.
Connor initially showed some improvement, but in February “the wheels fell off completely” and he developed bile obstruction, said Mollison. ‘‘Doctors in Durban did two small operations, but he had recurring infections and has been in hospital since February.”
Mollison said her sons had never been in the same room and had not seen each other since Connor was hospitalised.
‘‘Keegan wasn’t allowed in the room because of the strict precautions. We hope we can take Connor home soon,” she said.
Mollison praised the livingdonor procedure. ‘‘The thought of having your bags packed and waiting for someone else’s family member to die . . . I don’t like that. The procedure is amazing. I can’t believe how good he looks,” she said.
Botha said the procedure meant that people in need of a liver transplant might no longer need to wait for a donor organ.
“Often death occurs while waiting for organs,” he added.