The nation's first transplantation of a small intestine from a legally established brain-dead donor was conducted Sunday by a group of doctors at Kyoto University Hospital in Kyoto, transplant coordinators said.
The donor was a woman in her 50s certified as brain-dead Saturday afternoon at a hospital in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture. She is the 11th since the procedure was legalized in Japan in 1997, they said. The woman was admitted to Kawasaki City Hospital after collapsing due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, officials at the Japan Organ Transplant Network said.
The recipient is a girl less than 10 years old who has a shorter-than-usual intestine, they said.
The donor's heart was transplanted Sunday morning into a male patient in his 50s who was suffering from dilated cardiomyopathy, at the National Cardiovascular Center in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, they said.
Her pancreas and kidneys were given to two patients at Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital.
However, a liver transplant scheduled to be conducted at Shinshu University Hospital in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, was given up due to medical reasons, doctors there said.
Her lungs were carried to Osaka University Hospital.
Organ transplants from brain-dead donors have drawn considerable public interest in Japan.
The 1997 law took effect three decades after a 1968 scandal over a controversial organ transplant at Sapporo Medical University in which a surgeon was accused of murder. The doctor conducted a heart transplant from a 20-year-old man to an 18-year-old who died 83 days later.
Some experts questioned whether the recipient really needed a new heart and said the legal process for determining that the donor was clinically dead was flawed.
In the end, the prosecutors decided not to indict the doctor, but the incident is credited with discouraging the introduction of laws for organ transplants from brain-dead people.