Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

A 39-YEAR-OLD father shed nearly 10 kilograms and successfully gave a portion of his liver to save his then 7-month-old daughter who suffered from congenital biliary atresia June 17, two days before this Father’s Day.

The liver transplant was the city’s first-ever liver transplant from a living related donor, and is one of the most difficult organ transplant surgeries, according to the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen. The father and daughter were discharged from the hospital yesterday.

The little girl, identified as Beibei, was born in November 2021. Not long after she was born, she was diagnosed with congenital biliary atresia and underwent a Kasai procedure.

In biliary atresia, bile ducts that are located inside or outside the liver are blocked. When the bile is unable to leave the liver through the bile ducts, the liver becomes damaged and many vital body functions are affected. The Kasai procedure creates an artificial portal to restore normal bile flow.

According to doctors from the liver transplantation department of the Third People’s Hospital of Shenzhen, more than two-thirds of children with congenital biliary atresia who underwent a Kasai procedure still need a liver transplant.

The father, identified as Zhu, was aware that his daughter probably needed a liver transplant, so he looked up a lot of materials related to living-donor liver transplants from related donors, and decided to donate his liver to save his daughter.

“My daughter’s blood type is type O. First, if a transplant was needed, it would be difficult to find a match from other liver donors. Second, if she received my liver, the rejection reaction might be smaller, and she might probably don’t have to take drugs for a lifetime,” Zhu explained.

Zhu began to lose weight as he had moderate fatty liver and abnormal uric acid, blood lipid and blood pressure levels. Before they sought treatment at the Shenzhen hospital, he had lost nearly 10 kilograms and his moderate fatty liver had become normal.

According to the hospital, liver transplants from living related donors are the mainstream of pediatric liver transplants, accounting for about 60-70%, because the small number of liver allograft donors cannot meet the current needs of pediatric liver transplants.

The transplant was difficult as Beibei was only 7 months old and has thin blood vessels and bile ducts. She also suffered from recurring cholangitis, abdominal adhesion and perivascular inflammation after her Kasai procedure.

But the hospital’s liver transplantation team managed to transplant part of Zhu’s liver into Beibei through microsurgery and vascular surgery. About 15-20% of the total volume of Zhu’s liver was removed in the process.