AA / Oviedo, Espagne / Alyssa McMurtry
A hospital in the Spanish capital Madrid has performed the world’s first bowel transplant from a donor whose heart had stopped beating, Madrid’s health minister announced on Tuesday.
The beneficiary was a 13-month-old girl named Emma. She had been diagnosed with intestinal failure when she was just a month old and at times there was little hope that doctors might save her.
But his condition coincided with a three-year research project at the La Paz hospital, in which researchers were studying the possibility of transplanting intestines from donors with asystole.
Asystole is another term for cardiac death and means that a person’s heart is in a state of total failure.
After studying the idea, following deciding that Emma was a good candidate and following finding a donor, the doctors carried out this unprecedented operation.
The operation was a success and Emma was able to leave the hospital.
“We didn’t experience deliverance until she walked into the operating room. Our life has turned 180 degrees because she is so much better…she is already starting to crawl,” said said Emma’s father at a press conference.
Francisco Hernández Oliveros, head of the pediatric surgery department at La Paz hospital, said the researchers considered using intestines from donors in asystole because there are “very few pediatric donors in Spain”.
“It is important to highlight what this transplant represents now and what it will represent in Spain and the rest of the world. We are talking regarding a global milestone and an absolutely pioneering intervention”, said Beatriz Dominguez Gil, responsible of the Spanish National Organization of Transplantation.
“It’s very promising for other children who may find themselves in the same situation as Emma,” she added.
Spain is already a world leader in organ donation, with a donation rate twice the European average. Thus, in 2021, nearly 5,000 transplants were performed in Spain, according to the Spanish Ministry of Health, an increase of 8% compared to 2020.
Spain’s leading position is partly explained by the fact that individuals automatically donate their organs, unless they have chosen to opt out of the system. The National Transplantation Organization also played a key role in coordinating transplants.
The progress made with donations in asystole has enabled the number of transplants to continue to increase. In Spain, these donations increased by 32% between 2020 and 2021.
*Translated from English by Mourad Belhaj
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