A nine-year-old girl is making what doctors described as a remarkable recovery on Sunday, days after surgeons transplanted six of her organs in a groundbreaking medical procedure.
The surgery performed on last Tuesday on young Alannah Shevenell, sought to remove an aggressive cancerous growth festering since 2008, and that had attacked her stomach, liver, pancreas, esophagus, small intestine and spleen.
The surgery was performed in Boston, Massachusetts at Children's Hospital, one of this nation's most highly regarded medical facilities.
"For just under 100 days Alannah and her grandmother have been staying at Children's while she received treatment for a rare and aggressive cancer that was compromising several of her internal organs," the hospital said in a statement.
When all other treatments had failed, Heung Bae Kim, MD, director of Children's Pediatric Transplant Centre suggested a multivisceral transplant that would remove Alannah's tumour and replace the six organs that had been damaged by its presence. The nine-year old, who hails from the northeastern state of Maine, was the lucky recipient of organs from a recently deceased child of the same size and blood type, and which were able to be transplanted at the same time. Kim told the Boston Globe newspaper that they anticipate that Alannah will make a complete recovery.
"She will not have real restrictions in terms of activity," Bae Kim told the Globe.