2.5-year-old brain-dead girl gives new lease of life to 5-year-old

A five-year-old girl in Mumbai underwent a liver transplant after her parents donated the organ of a brain-dead two-and-a-half-year-old girl. The girl had a rare metabolic disorder, and the transplant was her only chance for survival.

Mumbai: A five-year-old girl underwent a liver transplant at Nanavati Max Super Speciality Hospital after the parents of a two-and-a-half-year-old brain-dead girl donated her organ.

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Rahi Parkia, only daughter of a Surat couple, was diagnosed with Tyrosinemia Type 1, a rare inborn error of metabolism resulting in elevated levels of tyrosine (an essential amino acid).

“Due to this defect, tyrosine is not metabolised in the body and elevated levels affect multiple organs like liver, nervous system and kidneys. Untreated disease leads to early liver cancer which is uniformly fatal. Rahi had cirrhosis, portal hypertension, renal tubular acidosis (kidney damage) and bone deformity accompanied by growth failure. The only possible lifesaving treatment option for her was a timely liver transplant,” Dr Anurag Shrimal, director, liver, pancreas and intestine transplantation, said.

“Though she is five-year-old, she weighs only 15 kg, the weight of a two- to three-year-old child. She also had bone deformity and kidneys were getting affected,” Shrimal added.

He said that Rahi was put on the cadaver organ wait list 10 days ago. “She came to us a month back. 95-98% of paediatric liver transplants in our country are done using a small part of the liver of an adult donor. In Rahi’s case, her father has been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which is part of the body’s germ-fighting immune system. Her mother is the caretaker for both of them. Neither could donate the liver. We therefore put her on the Zonal Transplant Coordination Centre (ZTCC_ wait list,” Shrimal said.

This is the second paediatric cadaver organ donation of the year. In June, the parents of a three-year-old boy from Dombivli donated his heart, liver and kidneys. The city recorded the youngest paediatric cadaver donation in February 2019 of a two-year-old boy.