Baby Recovers After Receiving 4-Organ Transplant
INDIANAPOLIS - Stormy Bryant has weathered raging health problems in
her short 14 months of life, but the transplant of four organs into her
tiny body at Riley Hospital for Children offers her a smoother future.
The Clayton, Ind., child is recovering after receiving new intestines,
stomach, liver and pancreas - the first procedure of its kind in Indiana
and one of only a handful ever performed in the United States. Her surgery
is a multivisceral transplant and involves the transplantation of abdominal
organs.
Lead surgeon Joseph Tector, M.D., and Jonathan A. Fridell, both assistant
professors of surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine, performed
the nine-hour procedure.
"Stormy remains in the intensive care unit, but she continues to
improve," says Dr. Tector. "We anticipate she will remain in
the hospital for three months."
When Stormy, the daughter of Tavi and Joseph Bryant, was born at Methodist
Hospital in Indianpolis, physicians discovered she had only 20 centimeters
of small intestine; the normal tract for newborns ranges between 200 and
300 centimeters. The tot was unable to digest food and was fed intravenously,
leading to liver failure, which is risk for those receiving long-term
IVs.
The youngster has spent most of her life in hospitals and has been on
a transplant waiting list since last July. On Aug. 23, she was receiving
treatment at Riley for an infection when she was matched with a donor
in Missouri, a month-old baby who died. Dr. Fridell was immediately dispatched
to retrieve the organs.
The four donor organs were still connected when Dr. Tector and his team
transplanted them into Stormy. Riley physicians report she has gained
color since the operation, a healthy contrast to her pre-operative yellowish
coloring caused by liver failure.
"Multivisceral transplants have been performed only at a select
number of institutions because few surgeons are qualified and trained
to perform them," says David A. Alvar, administrative director of
the Clarian Transplant Center. Only 29 transplants of this kind were performed
last year in the United States.
The procedure at Riley was the second of the "first-of-its-kind"
in Indiana in the last month. On Aug. 22. Drs. Tector and Fridell led
a team that successfully performed a small bowel transplant on a 3-year-old
boy whose intestines were failing him because he was unable to absorb
nutrition through normal digestive processes.
The Clarian Transplant Center combines the clinical expertise, research and teaching excellence of IU, Methodist and Riley. Overall, the center is a national leader in transplant services, ranking seventh in volume.
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Media Contact: Joe Stuteville
IU School of Medicine
317-274-7722
jstutevi@iupui.edu
James Wide
Clarian Health Partners
317-962-4589
jwide@clarian.org
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