Monday, March 19, 2007
2-for-1 transplant lets patients split a liver - A.P.
The transplant surgeon had good news: A donated liver was on the way for critically ill Maggie Catherwood. Then he asked: Would she let doctors cut off part of her new liver to share with an equally sick baby?
“I can’t imagine anyone saying no,” the 21-year-old college student said last week as, teary-eyed, she met 8-month-old Allison Brown, carefully cuddling the wide-eyed baby so as not to bump each other’s healing incisions.
...
Catherwood’s symptoms started in the fall, when suddenly she couldn’t keep food down. The day after her 21st birthday, she learned she had Wilson’s disease — her liver couldn’t properly dispose of the copper in food. The quiet buildup was destroying it. In early February, the Sterling, Va., woman joined the nearly 17,000 people on the waiting list for liver transplants.
Allison was 3½ months old when doctors discovered her worsening jaundice meant biliary atresia — the Waldorf, Md., girl was born without all her major bile ducts. She joined the transplant list in early December, the whites of her eyes turning canary yellow as the months ticked by and her liver shut down.
Livers are distributed to the sickest patients first. Late on Feb. 27, Georgetown’s Dr. Cal Matsumoto got word that the transplant network had flagged Catherwood to receive a liver from a teenager who had just died. Knowing Allison was a match, too, he broached the two-for-one transplant. ...
The transplant surgeon had good news: A donated liver was on the way for critically ill Maggie Catherwood. Then he asked: Would she let doctors cut off part of her new liver to share with an equally sick baby?
“I can’t imagine anyone saying no,” the 21-year-old college student said last week as, teary-eyed, she met 8-month-old Allison Brown, carefully cuddling the wide-eyed baby so as not to bump each other’s healing incisions.
...
Catherwood’s symptoms started in the fall, when suddenly she couldn’t keep food down. The day after her 21st birthday, she learned she had Wilson’s disease — her liver couldn’t properly dispose of the copper in food. The quiet buildup was destroying it. In early February, the Sterling, Va., woman joined the nearly 17,000 people on the waiting list for liver transplants.
Allison was 3½ months old when doctors discovered her worsening jaundice meant biliary atresia — the Waldorf, Md., girl was born without all her major bile ducts. She joined the transplant list in early December, the whites of her eyes turning canary yellow as the months ticked by and her liver shut down.
Livers are distributed to the sickest patients first. Late on Feb. 27, Georgetown’s Dr. Cal Matsumoto got word that the transplant network had flagged Catherwood to receive a liver from a teenager who had just died. Knowing Allison was a match, too, he broached the two-for-one transplant. ...
Labels: sickness
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