Baby and father under the knife for 12 hours

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Thu, 14 Jul 2011 7:00p.m.

Baby Louie has an extremely rare liver condition but Dad's new liver should put a stop to that

Baby Louie has an extremely rare liver condition but Dad's new liver should put a stop to that

Baby Louie will receive the most precious gift from his dad today: The gift of a liver and with it, the gift of life.

He's being prepped for his transplant surgery, which will be led by Professor Stephen Munn.

In the theatre next door - dad's operation is already underway.

The lead surgeon is Dr Peter Johnson - and with him is Dr Adam Bartlett. The rest of the team are anaesthetists and nurses.

This is a nerve wracking time for them, working on a live donor, who's perfectly healthy.

Louie has an extremely rare liver condition that would otherwise kill him or leave him brain damaged. It allows poisons to run freely through his body. Dad's new liver should put a stop to that.

The surgeons are literally cutting the liver in two, leaving most of it behind and about a quarter of it will go to Louie.

After around four hours Louie’s piece of liver is removed, weighed, and put on ice

Then it is wrapped up carefully - put into a box - and walked next door to Louie’s operating theatre.

Professor Munn and his colleague Dr Phil Morreau are working on Louie.

First, they carefully remove the sick liver.

“He can survive without a liver for probably 6, 8, 10 hours, something like that. We're not going to leave him without a liver for that long, but he can survive perfectly well,” Professor Munn says.

And then starts the extremely delicate operation of putting the new liver into his tiny body.

Some of his vein and artery joins are just millimetres in diameter.

“The blood flow into the artery is the single most important bit and then after that once we're very happy with all of that, we do the bile duct, that's the last thing to be done,” Professor Munn says.

It is a really tough day for mum. Her husband and baby going under the knife for around 12 hours altogether.

But the Charles family want people to learn from their story - and see the gift of life you give with organ donation.

Watch the video.

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Comments

19 Jul 2011 02:35a.m.

Dianne wrote:

God bless the surgeons and hospital workers, Yay for the day to Dad and the wee man. Keep well and healthy.

17 Jul 2011 03:20p.m.

Colleen Mackay wrote:

Truly remarkable,may God's blessings be always with you and your families

15 Jul 2011 10:55a.m.

Daisy Bunce wrote:

Lovely story about liver transplant baby and dad but shame on programme maker for the huge breach of the dads privacy. On top top of the cooler bin transporting donated part was the dads full name, date of birth, address, cell phone number and his medical number, leaving him very vulnerable to identification theft!