Boy receives liver transplant to treat rare disease

Doctors from Renji Hospital conducted a liver transplant surgery on a 2-year-old boy suffering a rare disease, the hospital said on Friday.

A local hospital discovered that the child had rickets as well as liver problems, after his parents brought him to doctors due to his unsteady walk. Blood tests indicated that he suffered from cancerous changes to the liver.

The family took him to Shanghai’s Renji Hospital, where Dr Xia Qiang’s team found that he suffered tyrosinemia, an inherited metabolic disorder that can lead to liver and kidney disease and mental retardation unless controlled by a special diet.

The boy had tyrosinemia type 1, which occurs once in every 100,000 people. It has acute and chronic conditions. Children with acute condition can suffer liver failure quickly and even death, while those with chronic condition can suffer from slow growth, liver cirrhosis, liver cancer associated with kidney damages and rickets. Liver transplant is an effective treatment.

Doctors conducted a transplant by using 240 grams of liver tissue donated by the mother on Thursday. The five-hour surgery ran smoothly, as there were only 50 milliliters of blood loss and both the mother and child are recovering well.