7-Year Old Girl Has 6 Organs Removed To Take Out Tumor

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Main Category: Transplants / Organ Donations
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Cancer / Oncology;  GastroIntestinal / Gastroenterology
Article Date: 11 Mar 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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Seven-year old Heather McNamara of Long Island, New York, is recovering after undergoing groundbreaking surgery to remove a tumor last month when doctors took out six of her organs, the small and large intestine, liver, spleen, pancreas and stomach so they could remove a tumor the size of a tennis ball.

During the 23-hour procedure at the Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in New York, three surgical teams first removed the small and large intestine, liver, spleen, pancreas and stomach and the tumor that was wrapped around them and put the organs in iced preservative solution, according to CNN.

They then extracted the tumor while preparing Heather's body so they could reimplant three of her organs; this was done within four hours of removal. The surgeons couldn't reimplant Heather's spleen, pancreas and stomach because they were too badly affected by the tumor.

Heather and her parents, Joseph and Tina told New York Daily News they had one message for those with severe medical problems:

"There's hope."

Heather's mother said anyone who has a child with a medical problem should not give up:

"Keep going, don't stop at a second opinion," said Tina McNamara.

Heather's condition, where an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor the size of a tennis ball had wrapped itself around main blood vessels and was destroying vital organs, had been declared "inoperable", and surgeons had told Tina and Joseph McNamara there was nothing left to try after chemotherapy failed. .

After being told that Heather wasn't going to survive after her second stomach tumor failed to respond to the chemo, the family heard about Dr Tomoaki Kato, the only transplant surgeon known to have done this procedure before on a 62 year old woman, reported CBS News. So they approached him.

Heather's father Joe McNamara said Kato was the only one who said "yes, we can take it out".

Joe McNamara was on standby during the whole procedure, ready to donate part of his liver in case his daughter's couldn't be saved.

The ordeal was exhausting for the surgical teams. Kato told New York Daily News that he had to rest on the couch outside the operating theatre for five to six hours afterwards because he was literally "about to collapse" after the lengthy surgery.

A transplant surgeon at New York University School of Medicine, Dr Devon John, who was not involved in the case, told CNN that he was impressed by the surgery, calling it a "tour de force". Such a procedure needs careful planning and a multidisciplinary approach, he said.

John said that in this case the surgery would be further complicated by the fact Heather was a child which means her blood vessels are smaller and there is less "wiggle room".

Heather, who left hospital on Tuesday this week, now carries a backpack containing a food pump, the only visible sign of her ordeal. She is now diabetic because she has no pancreas, and will need to take insulin and pancreatic replacement drugs. She also runs the risk of infection because she has no spleen and will have to take penicillin for a few months.

She does however have a sort of replacement stomach, a pouch that surgeons made from intestinal tissue that will partly process food before it moves to the small intestine. Heather will probably be able to eat normally, but as Kato told CNN, because of her limited stomach capacity, he doesn't see Heather "competing in hot dog-eating contests".

While her sutures heal, Heather has a stoma for the removal of stools. But this will be removed in a couple of months said Kato.

If her tumor doesn't return, her surgeons said Heather has a good chance of leading a normal life.

Sources: CNN, CBS, New York Daily News.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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