Baby has eight organ transplant

Wearing a pink dress, an Italian baby girl who received eight new organs in a single transplant operation cried and cooed today as her mother held the infant in her arms and looked forward to her daughter’s future.

“Her biggest feeling is happiness,” said a doctor who was translating for Monica Di Matteo, 39, mother of 7 1/2-month-old Alessia Di Matteo. On her daughter’s future, the mother was “hoping for a normal life.”

Alessia, from Genoa, was born with congenital smooth muscle disorder, which prevented normal function of her stomach, intestines and kidneys. The condition is fatal if left untreated.

She underwent an operation six weeks ago at Florida’s Jackson Memorial Hospital in which received a new liver, stomach, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine, spleen and two kidneys.

The organs were all taken from the same donor and transplanted together as a unit, said Dr Andreas Tzakis, the lead surgeon.

Tzakis said doctors will be cautious with Alessia during her first year after the surgery. She is expected to remain in Miami several more weeks for observation.

“We are not at ease at all about the baby’s condition and we’re going to be quite nervous for the first year,” he said Friday.

A transplant team from the University of Miami performed the 12 hour operation January 31, when Alessia was six months old, at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

The transplant was a record for the hospital, which is one of the leading centres for “multi-visceral” operations, having done nearly 100 in the last 10 years, Tzakis said. More than 80% of patients survive the first year after the surgery, he said.

Officials said the previous record-holder for a multiple organ transplant was another Italian baby, Eugenia Borgo, who had a seven-organ transplant in 1997. The girl is now in school and healthy, Tzakis said.

Before the transplants, Alessia was hospital-bound with multiple infections, Tzakis said. Now she weighs about 13 pounds and is fed through a tube, but is out of the intensive care unit, Tzakis said.

Doctors are monitoring her intestines, which are most likely to develop infections.