Recipients of 10-month-old Aalin’s liver and kidneys doing well

Ten-month-old Aalin Sherin Abraham left her parents’ arms way too early in life. But in her passing, she is lighting up the lives of five others, including two children, thanks to the resolve of her parents, who immortalised their daughter’s memory by donating her organs.

Aalin, the youngest organ donor in the State, will be cremated on Sunday evening with State honours, as per a directive of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who hailed the supreme sacrifice made by Aalin’s parents.

The tiny organs of the infant, liver and two kidneys, which were transported to Thiruvananthapuram by road in a special ambulance on Friday night were transplanted within hours in two children who were awaiting organs for a fresh lease of life.

The transplant surgeries, which began late night on Friday, were completed in the early hours on Saturday. Both organ recipients—a six-month-old infant at KIMSHEALTH and a 10-year-old girl at SAT Hospital— are stable in respective ICUs.

The liver was transplanted by KIMSHEALTH hospital in Dhriya, a 6-month-old baby girl, who had a history of severe liver failure, secondary to Primary Biliary Atresia. Though she had earlier undergone a Kasai procedure at three months of age, she had developed progressive liver failure, with a liver transplant being the only option ahead. A statement issued by the hospital said that the baby’s clinical condition is currently stable and that the metabolic parameters related to the transplanted liver were showing encouraging improvement.

Aalin’s two kidneys, measuring just 5 cm each, were transplanted in a 10-year-old girl from Vellarada here. The child had been diagnosed with severe renal failure following bilateral Vesicoureteral Reflux when she was admitted in a critical condition at SAT hospital at eight years of age. She has been on maintenance haemodialysis at the Paediatric Nephrology unit at SAT hospital since then

‘Unusual event’

”A 10-year-old child needs kidneys of 8-10 cm to fulfill the renal capacity at that age, which is why both kidneys of the infant were transplanted in her. The surgery which began at 11 p.m. on Friday was successfully completed by 5.45 a.m. She is recovering well and the creatinine levels have begun to drop,” Susan Uthup, the head of Paediatric Nephrology at SAT hospital said.  “This was a very unusual event, for an infant’s kidneys to be donated and a rarer event for it to be both transplanted in a young child. The enormity of the gift that Aalin’s parents have given is beyond words,” Dr. Uthup said. The surgery was performed by a renal transplant team at Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, which included paediatric nephrologists and paediatric surgeons as well.

The infant’s heart valves were received by Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (these will be processed and stored in the heart valve bank, for transplantation at a later stage) and the corneas were received by the eye bank at Amritha Institute of Medical Sciences.