A baby boy has become China's youngest liver-transplant recipient - thanks to the ingenuity of Shanghai doctors.

Haohao, the 106-day-old boy, has some time with his parents in Xinhua Hospital before doctors on Saturday transplanted part of his mother's liver in a life-saving procedure.

Surgeons at Xinhua Hospital carried out a delicate, intricate and potentially perilous nine-hour operation on Saturday when they excised part of the mother's liver and placed it in her 106-day-old son.

Both the mother, 35, and infant are in a stable condition.

If the boy, named Haohao, continues to recover well, he is expected to leave hospital in three to four weeks, doctors said yesterday.

The mother, a Zhejiang Province native, donated 215 grams of her liver to save the boy, who suffered from congenital biliary atresia, a condition where bile cannot drain from the liver due to an absence or closure of ducts.

"The boy's liver had been seriously hampered by the disease," said Dr Wang Jun, from Xinhua Hospital's pediatric surgery department. "If he did not have the surgery, he could have died of liver failure within a year.

"Currently, liver transplant is the only effective method of treatment."

The earlier the transplant surgery, the smaller the impact on other organs due to the impaired liver function, Wang said.

Doctors said because the boy is so young, his immunity system is still in its primary stages, making rejection of the new organ less likely.

The surgery began at 8:30 AM on the mother to take the section of her liver, which was then transplanted into the boy from 10:30 AM.

The entire procedure finished about 5:30 PM.

A liver transplant in such a young patient is considered risky, as his arteries are only two to three millimeters in diameter.

Doctors must suture the liver arteries quickly as a child can only survive for 40 minutes without the vital organ.

(Shanghai Daily May 21, 2007)