brettaustin's posterous

By Andy Bloxham
Published: 8:00AM BST 15 Aug 2009

Transplant patients Sandie Lee Smith and Sean O'Brien Photo: SWNS

The British team performed two stomach, bowel and liver transplants on five different patients, including an eight-month-old baby, on the same day in a remarkable feat of coordination.

The series of operations began on June 11 when, at around midnight, surgeons at Birmingham Children's Hospital and University Hospitals Birmingham were told that two donors had become available.

The first donor gave a stomach, pancreas and small bowel to an 11-year-old boy in the first stage of the procedures.

Next, in simultaneous operations at around 8am, donor one gave half a liver to eight-month-old Lubaya Turpin and Sandie Lee Smith, 30, from Cheltenham, Glos, received the other half.

In a 'domino' transplant, Mrs Smith's liver - which was dangerous to her because her body could not process toxins - was then given to Sean O'Brien, 43, from Taunton, in Somerset.

The second team of surgeons, meanwhile, took a liver, pancreas and intestine from the second donor and gave them to a 14-year-old boy from Bradford.

The operations were carried out by surgeons Darius Mirza, Khalid Sharif, Paolo Muiesan and Simon Bramell with a team of consultants.

Four of the patients involved in the procedures met up for the first time on Thursday at Birmingham Children's Hospital.

Mr O'Brien, who has one child, was diagnosed with liver cancer four years ago but does not qualify for a healthy organ on the donor list because he is terminally-ill.

He said: ''Sometimes words aren't enough. I hugged her. I feel incredibly grateful, incredibly happy and incredibly humble.

''After the surgery my wife Sam said she'd never seen such a big smile from someone on a ventilator and I've been smiling ever since.

''It's humbling to think at a time of immense grief, families can be so selfless and think about how their loved one could enhance someone else's life.''

It is the first time that this combination of transplants has ever been performed in one day and only fifth time in history that five successful transplants have been carried out in 24 hours.

Mrs Smith said: ''I feel great, like I've got new energy and can spend more time with my kids instead of being in and out of hospital."

Lubaya's father Dwayne Turpin,23, Birmingham, added: ''Her eyes used to be yellow now that's all cleared up and they are bright white again. She has a lot more energy whereas before she would be sluggish.

''She's been a very lucky baby.''

Mr Mirza, the surgeon, said: "In the UK the organ donor rate is one of the lowest in Europe.

"People are not as generous as they used to be. Education is important to inform people of the benefits being on the register can bring to other people's lives.

"I wish we could do domino transplants more often. Instead of discarding organs they can be used by someone else taking them off the waiting list."

There have been a total of 29 domino transplants in Britain but this is the first case where a damaged liver has been successfully transplanted.

To sign up on the Organ Donor Register call 0300 123 23 23 or visit www.organdonation.nhs.uk.

Umm....Yea sounds like the NHS is terrible...yeah if you wake up in opposite world with Glenn Beck everyday. This is seriously becoming too easy. I almost feel like I'm fishing with dynamite.

Seriously...someone defend that? It's sad when John Stewart, a comedian, has more journalistic credit than you.

When Mick Jagger sings the song “Dear Doctor,” he sort of fakes an American accent. After all, the song’s protagonist asks his doctor to cut out his heart, and only in the wild and wooly free healthcare market of the U.S. would any sawbones with an ounce of ethics consider such a thing. But hey, to Republicans, that’s probably a plus about the American system. Pay for what you want, right?

In fact, it's lately been one of the GOP's favorite touchstones in the healthcare debate. Republicans love to talk about lines for care in the U.K.’s stolid socialized system: Go on the government’s dime for medicine, and you’ll die waiting for that easy surgery!

Seeking to play up this groundbreaking “Be frightened of England” angle, the Republican National Committee ran a web ad warning, "In Great Britain, individuals lose their right to make their own health care choices.” The Club for Growth, a conservative group, has a spot claiming that British bureaucrats pegged the value of six months of life at $22,750. “Under their socialized system, if your treatment costs more, you're out of luck,” the ad's narrator says as the spot cuts back and forth from weeping elderly people to Big Ben and the British flag.

Perhaps most egregiously, Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) warned that socialized medicine would be a death sentence for the vulnerable among us, like ALS-afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking. IBD editorialized, “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

Hawking is, of course, a professor at the University of Cambridge, and quite British. (The editorial has since been changed to accommodate this seemingly overwhelming disproof.)

Naturally, the British didn’t cotton to having their healthcare system conscripted to serve as a bogeyman. You see, not only are the British not currently being stomped on by the heel of a socialist-fascist-whatever Orwellian dictatorship, they actually quite like the way things over there work. In the U.K., the National Health Service (NHS) plays approximately the political role that Social Security does here. Sure, it may have been controversial to establish: Although Winston Churchill helped lay the groundwork for the NHS, he also warned during the 1945 campaign that the Labour Party's welfare state ideas would require “some kind of Gestapo” to administer. (Sound familiar?) But once it was written into law, messing with the NHS became political poison. Even Margaret Thatcher, at the height of her power, never dared to try.

That’s probably why Hawking says of British healthcare, “I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS.” The past few days have also seen a spike in the Twitter topic trend, #welovetheNHS, including tweets from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah Brown. Even David Cameron, the head of the Conservative Party and leader of the opposition, has felt compelled to declare, “I support the NHS 100 percent and the Conservative Party supports the NHS 100 percent.”

The GOP really ought to have been more careful about this. If you’re going to use another country’s policy as a foil, you first might want to check to make sure that policy is not, in fact, overwhelmingly popular. And if you really want to go ahead with it even then, probably best to pick a country that doesn’t speak English.

― Gabriel Winant

Like I've said before. GOP come up with a valid argument and then talk. All these scare tactics aren't going to work. False information in this day and age can easily be disproved. Did we really think the British people would like us using their prized healthcare system as a "bogeyman"?