Sun, Jun 15, 2025 page3

• NTUH hails liver transplant successes

  • Staff writer, with CNA
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  National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) at a news conference on Friday lauded the 10-year survival rate of 75 percent for people who had pediatric liver transplants there over the past 30 years and highlighted two successful procedures involving Indonesian children.

  “All the anatomical structures [in children’s livers] are very small,” making pediatric liver transplants more challenging than adult ones, said Hu Rey-heng (胡瑞恒), an attending physician in NTUH’s Department of Surgery.

  Other factors such as limited abdominal space, a shortage of suitable donors and the need for precise dosing — as children have lower tolerance for excess medication — also pose significant challenges to the success of pediatric liver transplants, Hu said.

  

  David Kenrich Huang, fourth left, and Sherlyn Aurelia, sixth left, who underwent liver transplants at National Taiwan University Hospital, pose with family members and doctors at a news conference in Taipei on Friday.

  Photo: CNA

  Despite the complexities, the hospital has been performing pediatric liver transplants — defined as transplants received by people under the age of 18 — since 1992, with about 200 procedures to date, he said.

  Of the 174 procedures performed between January 1992 and December 2021, the five-year survival rate was 85 percent and the 10-year survival rate was 75 percent, with 83 percent of the patients requiring the surgery due to cholestatic diseases, he said.

  Cholestatic diseases are conditions in which the flow of bile from the liver is reduced or blocked, with examples including biliary atresia, a blockage in the ducts that can lead to liver damage or death if left untreated.

  Among those who have undergone a transplant at NTUH are 11-year-old Sherlyn Aurelia and 10-year-old David Kenrich Huang, both Indonesians born with biliary atresia.

  “Sherlyn’s condition was more critical when she first arrived, so she spent some time in the intensive care unit before the transplant,” Hu said.

  The girl had undergone an unsuccessful Kasai operation — aimed at re-establishing bile flow from the liver into the intestine — in Malaysia to treat biliary atresia before being referred to NTUH in August 2014, he said.

  After a 10-hour surgery at NTUH in September 2014, Sherlyn, who was one at the time, received part of a liver from her mother.

  Checkups at NTUH every six months have shown that she has recovered well, the hospital said.

  After learning about Sherlyn’s case, Huang’s father contacted NTUH seeking treatment for his son, who also had biliary atresia.

  The hospital agreed and gave the son part of his father’s liver in a living-donor transplant at the hospital in 2016, when he was just one year old, the hospital said.

  Now both in good health, the two children and their families at the news conference expressed gratitude to the NTUH medical team for their years of care.

  Lee Yi-hsuan (李怡萱), deputy executive officer of NTUH’s International Medical Service Center, said that the hospital has treated more than 2,000 international patients requiring hospitalization through referrals from overseas medical institutions.
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