A baby girl from Dublin has become at five days old the world's youngest transplant patient, thanks to a new technique which reduced a donor liver to one-eighth of its normal size. Baebhen Schuttke, now aged five months, received the life-saving transplant at King's College Hospital, London, after she was diagnosed with a rare liver condition, called neonatal haemochromatosis, which had claimed the lives of two of her brothers.
In a six-hour operation, the girl's diseased liver was replaced by a lower section of the left lobe of the liver of a 10-year-old boy who had died in an accident.
The segment, measuring four inches by three, about the size of a packet of playing cards, was cut by the transplant team while Dr Mohamed Rela removed the diseased liver.
Surgeons at the hospital pioneered the technique and have successfully used it to carry out liver transplants on 13 children aged under three months. They discovered that each of the liver's eight segments can work independently. As part of the operation, the donor organ is reduced to one segment.
The hospital team say babies under three months have the advantage of having an undeveloped immune system, which makes organ rejection, a problem which often affects adult patients, less likely. Dr Rela said he was confident the child would remain healthy. "She has done very well, and the liver is now adapting to her body and is growing normally. She will not need another transplant when she's older," he said.
Prof Giorgina Mieli-Vergani, a consultant liver paediatrician, who cared for one of the girl's brothers, said the success of the operation was a significant achievement. "Baebhen's condition is very rare, and our medical advances . . . permitted this breakthrough in treatment," she said. "Babies can actually take to liver transplants better than older children because the body is so new the immune system doesn't reject an alien object in the body."
Baebhen was diagnosed with the condition, also known as bronzed diabetes, just two days after she was born in July. She was flown to London where she was operated on three days later. Two teams of surgeons, doctors, nurses and transplant staff worked on the infant.
Within four weeks she was able to go home to Dublin. She is now required to have check-ups every six weeks and take medication three times a day. Her disease is quite common in adults but very rare in children. A genetic disorder, it is characterised by high levels of iron.
Her mother, Ita, said: "We have no family history of the disease. We have no idea where it comes from, it's a complete mystery." Ita and her husband Jurgen, who live in Clontarf, discovered the pioneering operation after searching on the Internet for information about Baebhen's condition.
Mr Schuttke, who is from Germany, said: "If we hadn't used the Net I don't think we would have found King's. We could have had another dead baby." The couple were also advised by an American specialist to go to the hospital for help.
Mrs Schuttke said that when Baebhen was diagnosed at two days old, all the family could think about was giving her a chance of life. She added that she and her husband had named their daughter Baebhen, an Irish name, which means "sweet beautiful woman and melodious".
"When Baebhen was born she roared for two hours, which was very melodious, so she lives up to her name," said Mrs Schuttke.
