Prague, April 26 (CTK) – A Czech baby girl born without the thymus gland, which is an extremely rare immune system defect, has undegone a successful transplantation in London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, the Motol University Hospital said in a press release on Thursday.
According to doctor Anna Sediva from the Motol hospital, who coordinated the entire transplantation process, it was an utterly rare, demanding and successful international cooperation, in which doctors from Motol hospital’s eight different clinics were involved.
The girl’s innate defects appeared to show shortly after her birth. She had a large intestine defect operated when she was one week old and she underwent a heart surgery two weeks later. She was diagnosed with thyroid hyperfunction and a grave immunologic defect due to which she was missing T-lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells that fights bacteria and viruses.
The thymus gland, which was transplanted to her last June, serves a vital role in the training and development of T-lymphocytes. She is the first Czech with a thymus transplant.
Following the her return to the Czech Republic, she was observed and regularly took medicines boosting immunity.
“The results so far attest to the success of the transplantation,” Sediva said.
Although the Czech Republic belongs to the world’s top countries as regards transplantations, there have not been any thymus transplants so far.
In 2017, the number of organ donors per million inhabitants was the sixth highest in the world. There were 837 transplants of organs from 269 deceased donors and 49 living ones. There are some 1,200 people waiting for organ transplants in the country.
