Woman Gets Six New Organs

From a correspondent in Sweden

November 26, 2003

A woman has received six new organs in a rare transplant operation in Sweden in which all the organs came from a single donor, Swedish doctors announced today. The woman, whose name was not disclosed but who was described as in her 40s, received a new liver, stomach, duodenum, pancreas, intestine and kidney in the 18-hour operation conducted at Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Hospital yesterday.

She is the first person in Scandinavia to have undergone such surgery.

"It has been done only a few times in the United States," one of the surgeons, Gustaf Herlenius, told Swedish news agency TT.

The woman is now in intensive care and doing well, doctors said.

"The first two days are critical and then it will take a few weeks to see if it has all been a success," another surgeon, Michael Olausson, said.

The six organs were removed from the donor's body as a single package, cleaned and then cooled down before being transplanted into the woman's abdomen.

"In total the package (of organs) was outside the body for five hours, which is a short time," Olausson said. Sahlgrenska Hospital has conducted seven other multi-organ transplant operations since 1998, when a five-year-old girl received five new organs.

"We have lost three of the previously operated patients, but the others are all doing fine. Even the little girl now lives a normal life," Herlenius said.

Multi-organ transplants are conducted on patients who suffer from a condition in which the intestine is too short and can therefore not absorb enough nourishment for the body. The condition affects all the other organs in the abdomen.

"A patient who has developed those symptoms can live one to two years" without a transplant, Herlenius said.

The hospital currently has three other patients in line for a similar multi-organ transplant.

Copyright © 2003 News Limited.

This article posted January 1, 2004.