Transplant center offers new hope for child patients

Ti Gong

A comprehensive pediatric organ transplant center was established at the Children's Hospital of Fudan University on Tuesday.

The hospital is the city's only children's hospital approved for heart, liver and kidney transplants. Since its first case in December, 2022, it has carried out 102 transplants, involving 89 kidneys, nine livers and four hearts. It is the children's hospital with the most pediatric transplant surgeries in China.

The hospital said it had made many breakthroughs in the past two years, including a patient with a second kidney transplant, a patient receiving a kidney donated by a grandparent, and a recipient with the lowest weight and youngest age in East China.

Liver transplant surgery is also not only conducted on children with blocked bile ducts, the commonest target for transplants, but liver cancer and complicated bile duct disease, bringing hope to children with acute or chronic liver failure and complicated and critical cases.

"With the establishment of an organ transplantation center, we will integrate the heart-liver-kidney transplant team along with multiple experts from intensive medicine, anesthesiology, clinical medicine, laboratory medicine and pathology to establish a full-chain system from pre-transplant evaluation, registration, surgery and post-transplant visit. We are also planning to expand our wards and carry out more challenging surgeries on younger patients and those with multiple organ transplant," said Wang Yi, president of the hospital.

"We will also make efforts to launch research and practice on transplanting lungs, intestines and pancreas to further meet patients' demand and push a more comprehensive development of organ transplants."

She said a transplant was the only hope for children with organ failure and the new center will benefit more patients and families.

Ti Gong