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BEIJING (CHINA / ASIA NEWS NETWORK) – Doctors from Hubei Province, central China, have announced that they have successfully transplanted the kidneys of a premature born baby into the body of A 47-year-old woman with kidney failure.
The donor weighed only 1.3 kg, the Wuhan Union Hospital said on Wednesday (July 10th), saying the baby was the lightest kidney donor ever reported.
The woman, named Wang, from Duchang County, Jiangxi Province, was diagnosed with uremia last June and the transplant was done a month later.
Without the transplant, Ms. Wang should have had a blood dialysis all her life to survive.
The kidneys used during the operation came from a premature baby, whose parents decided to donate organs after the baby's death, the hospital said.
After one year of follow-up treatment, the baby's kidneys, which were 3 to 4 cm long before the transplant, reached 6.9 cm and 7.6 cm in the patient's body, approximating the usual size. 10 cm for an adult.
Both kidneys are functioning normally and Ms. Wang has recovered, announced the hospital.
Transplants using kidneys given by infants are very difficult compared to kidneys given by adults. As a rule, babies weighing less than 5 kg are not considered abroad as organs for transplants, said the hospital.
Dr. Wang Zhendi, hospital transplant surgeon and woman doctor, said the blood vessels and ureter, a tube that carries kidney urine to the bladder, are very thin in the kidneys of infants. This makes precision surgery very difficult, with higher risks of postoperative complications. It is also harder for such kidneys to function in the body of an adult as they are not fully developed.
"The less weight a donor has, the more slowly the kidney recovers its function in the body where it is transplanted," he said.
Although an adult can survive with a single kidney, two kidneys are usually transplanted from an infant in order to improve the chances of success for health, he said.
The success of the surgery means that the sources of kidney transplants can be expanded to include infant donors. This will reduce the gap between the number of organs removed and the number of patients with end-stage renal disease awaiting a transplant in China, the hospital said.
In the only hospital in Wuhan Union, more than 500 registered patients with renal failure are waiting for appropriate organs for a transplant, announced the hospital.
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