In a 14-hour operation, a 45-year-old man has received a kidney and 60% of a liver from two separate living donors — his nieces.
The patient, Albert Duarte of Plymouth, Massachusetts, was expected to be released from the Lahey Clinic on November 23, by which time his nieces had already returned home and had resumed most of their usual activities, according to the clinic.
The clinic referred to the procedure as unprecedented. It involved three operating rooms, six surgeons, and about 20 more health care professionals. The clinic said that Mr. Duarte had a rare liver disease that was destroying his kidneys, that Mr. Duarte was receiving dialysis six days a week, and that he "did not have enough time to wait for a cadaver liver."
The procedure is one of fewer than 100 adult-to-adult liver transplants that have been performed with living donors since the operation was first used in the United States about two years ago.
Roger L. Jenkins, MD, W. David Lewis, MD, Elizabeth A. Pomfret, MD, and James J. Pomposelli, MD, were in charge of the liver transplant. John A. Libertino, MD, and Michael J. Malone, MD, performed the kidney transplant. The clinic also acknowledged the participation of Fredric D. Gordon, MD, director of hepatology at Lahey Clinic.
In another patient story, Reuters news service reported on November 25 that Lisa Ostrovsky, a ten-year-old Israeli girl with cystic fibrosis, received new lungs from separate living donors in a single operation at Children's Hospital in St. Louis. The girl's mother and a British man who came forward after reading about the girl's plight each donated one lung lobe, and the girl's own lungs were completely removed.
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