Living in Peru : your everyday companion

Christian Higa, a 15 month old Peruvian baby, successfully received a lung transplant

(LIP-wb) -- For the first time in Peru, a team of eleven doctors successfully completed a lung transplant, a feat regarded as a historic step in Peruvian medicine. Until now, a surgery of this magnitude was only possible in Brazil.

Christian Higa, a 15 month old little boy, received a new lobe of the lung from his mother that saved his life. For the team of doctors lead by Victor Gomez Ponce, the operation has been simply a rewarding experience.

To this day Peruvian hospitals have recorded 3,547 successful transplants: 1,786 kidney, 1,355 cornea, 341 bone marrow, 35 liver and 30 heart transplants.

Gomez said that Christian is slowly recovering from the first shock of the operation and in two weeks he will be able to return to a normal life, even though his other lobe is also in a bad condition.

Before he was confronted with Christian's disease, Gomez only counted on the experience gathered in 22 successful operations on animals. The team he led saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge.

“Since I was in Spain I always wanted to do a transplant because I had received a special qualification in Barcelona. I just had to wait for an opportunity”, he commented.

When he found out that little Christian was condemned to death, he and his team of experts received their chance. The operation took place on November 29 and lasted eight hours.

Dr. Manuel Adrianzen, a pediatric heart surgeon from the National Cardiology Institute and a member of the transplant team, admitted he was a little tense and nervous because of the enormous expectations.

“We had to perform two operations at the same time, two parallel procedures. While one group operated the boy the other took care of the mother and we had take necessary risks at the time of carrying out the connections to the organ”, he detailed.

Doctors said Christian's surgery was not a usual or conventional pulmonary transplant by any means. It was necessity to paralyze his heart for 27 minutes to re-implant the coronary vessels, because his arteries and veins were much smaller than those of his mother.

“The veins had to be united in another way…. in a direct way. For that reason our success is based on a great team effort because both operations had to be very synchronous. The veins and arteries had to be placed directly to the heart and that required synchronous moves”, Adrianzen added.

A lung transplant is usually the last resort treatment for lung failure. The new lung or lungs are usually donated by someone who has been declared brain-dead but remains on life-support. The donor tissue must be matched as closely as possible to that of the recipient to reduce the odds that the transplanted tissue will be rejected.

While the recipient is unconscious and pain-free (general anesthesia), an incision is made in the chest. Tubes are used to re-route blood to a heart-lung bypass machine to provide oxygen and circulation during the surgery.

One or both of the patient's lungs are removed, and the donor lung or lungs are stitched (sutured) into place. Chest tubes are inserted to drain air, fluid, and blood out of the chest for several days to allow the lungs to fully re-expand.

According to the doctors, the most dangerous part was the abstraction of a pulmonary lobe from a healthy person, whereas the most difficult part was to paralyze the heart of the baby.

Despite having to take pills known as "Tacrolimus" on a regular basis, Christian is expected to live a normal life from now on.