Liver transplants using organs donated by the patient's family
members is the key to saving patients' lives and solving the organ
shortage, experts from Ruijin Hopsital said yesterday.
The Ministry of Health is to discuss next week how to regulate
the process as an increasing number of domestic hospitals start to
get involved.
Ruijin Hospital carried out the nation's first liver transplant
in 1977 and earlier this week transplanted parts of liver from the
mother and father into a 15-year-old local girl. All are in a
stable condition.
Doctor Chen Yongjun
(center) and parents Shi Zhouming and Yan Weifang visit Shi Yi
yesterday after her liver transplant operation.
"Shi Yi hasn't shown serious rejection, and she is expected to
leave hospital in three weeks," said Shen Baiyong, vice director of
Ruijin's organ transplant center. "Her parents will be discharged
in one or two days."
Doctors said Shi Yi's condition could have become critical due
to liver failure if she hadn't had the transplant.
Her parents have received donations from Shanghai Charity
Foundation and her teachers and schoolmates to help pay for her
treatment and a pharmaceutical company has provided anti-rejection
medication.
Organ transplants between family members are an effective way to
control organ rejection and circumvent shortages.
In Japan and South Korea, 90 percent of liver transplants are
between family members. In Hong Kong it is 60 percent.
On the Chinese mainland, there are 3,000 liver transplants every
year but only 400 to 500 so far between family members.
(Shanghai Daily December 21, 2007)
