Japan: Brain dead child's organs save 3 lives

Tokyo: Heart, liver and kidneys of a brain dead child donor under six years of age were successfully transplanted at three hospitals in Japan early Saturday.

Surgeons at Osaka University Hospital successfully transplanted on Friday the heart to a girl under age 10, the hospital said, making her the youngest person to receive a heart transplant in Japan.

At the National Center for Child Health and Development in Tokyo, the transplant of the liver to another girl, also under 10, ended at 3 am on Saturday, while the kidneys were transplanted at Toyama Prefectural Central Hospital in Toyama city to a woman in her 60s.

$Japan: Brain dead child\'s organs save 3 lives$

Heart, liver and kidneys of a brain dead child donor under six years of age were successfully transplanted.

The procedure in Toyama took longer than scheduled to complete about seven-and-a-half hours through around 2 am on Saturday but surgeon Chikashi Seto said it was because he took extra care as it involved donated organs from a small child, adding that he is relieved as the patient has since urinated.

On Friday, surgical teams from the three medical institutions extracted the heart, liver and kidneys from the boy, who was declared brain dead at Toyama University Hospital in Toyama on Thursday as his brain was deprived of oxygen supply after suffering cardiopulmonary arrest following an accident.

It is the first case in which a donor under 6 years of age has been declared brain dead since the revised organ transplant law took effect in July 2010 to cover children under age 15, requiring tougher brain-death criteria for those under 6.

The boy's eyeballs were also extracted and the cornea is expected to be provided after a search for a recipient through the Toyama Eye Bank.

The girl was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, while the girl who received the liver was suffering from hepatic failure and the woman who received the kidneys had chronic glomerulonephritis.

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