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Friday, December 8, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
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Med Center to perform whole organ transplants
By Melanie Matthes Kansan staff writer
The history-making liver transplant that took place last week at the University of Chicago Medical Center is still a few years away from being practiced at the University of Kansas Medical Center, a Med Center official said.
The new surgery, which takes a portion of an adult liver and transplants it to a child, is still experimental, he said.
"I would say that type of surgery is at least two years away," said Jameson Forster, director of the liver transplant program.
It has been performed with some success in Australia, Brazil and Japan. Poor said, and was first commissioned in the United States Nov. 27 in Chicago.
"We need some time to watch and see if it can be applied on a wide basis," he said.
The Med Center does not perform liver transplants now but will implement a transplant program in January, Forster said.
He said the first transplantes performed at the Med Center would be whole organ transplants. The Chicago transplant is an extremely technical surgery and requires experienced liver transplant surgeons.
Christoph Broelsch, the Chicago surgeon who performed the transplant, has been doing liver transplants for a number of years and is qualified to do the surgery, Forster said.
"If the first transplants are successful and work well, we'll look at more technical procedures," Forster said. "But we need to ensure a little ironing out to make sure that this can work smoothly."
Mary Fetsch, public relations specialist at the Chicago Med Center, said that, depending on the expertise of the surgeon, the transplant was
something that could be done at transplant centers across the country.
The transplant is considered a surgical breakthrough because it makes organs available to children who might otherwise die while waiting for a donor.
But Forster he thought that reports that 50 percent of the children died while waiting for a donor were somewhat inflated.
The segmental transplants are performed on children who are elective patients, he said. This means that they are not in the critical stages of liver failure but will need a transplant at some point. These patients often wait for donors while their condition worsens.
Fetsch said that Teresa Smith, who donated a portion of her liver to her daughter, would be released yesterday afternoon. Her 21-month-old daughter, Alyssa, is in critical but stable condition.
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