A seven-year-old Derry girl who is the first child in the UK to have a triple organ transplant of a specific kind has been discharged from hospital just 12 weeks after the pioneering operation.
Adele Chapman underwent the 10-hour operation which gave her a new pancreas, liver and small bowel on April 28th at Birmingham Children's Hospital. The transplant was necessary as she was suffering from a rare disease which caused progressive dysmotility of the small bowel, making the organ unable to move properly.
A donor appeal was opened in March when Adele, who had been unable to eat for two years and was fed by an intravenous drip, became dangerously ill.
Mr Jean de Ville de Goyet carried out the operation with a lead team of two surgeons and three assistants. He said: "It was a difficult operation and basically it involved a transplantation in one block of the liver, small bowel and pancreas into the abdomen of the recipient."
Birmingham Children's Hospital specialises in small bowel and liver transplants on young patients, and its programme receives health service funding.
The hospital's clinical director, Dr Deirdre Kelly, said: "This is the first time in this country that a triple organ transplant operation has been carried out on a child. The addition of the pancreas made the technical side of the operation much more difficult, but luckily we have not had much rejection or infection episodes.
"The medical and clinical teams are delighted at how Adele has recovered. We have also been surprised by how few complications there have been." Within a months of surgery Adele was able to eat doughnuts and toast. Yesterday the soccer-loving youngster kicked a football with the nurses who had looked after her.
Her mother, Doreen, said it had been a long wait for Adele. "She has been very brave. There were times when we thought she wasn't going to make it, but now we are all just looking forward to the future."
Adele's release from hospital coincided with the start of National Transplant Week; her organ donor was a six-year-old child whose heart and kidneys have saved the lives of three other children.