21 October 2009 - King’s College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children have joined forces to create a new centre for children needing small bowel transplants.
The centre performed its first successful transplant last month and is the first of its kind in London.
Patient Charlie Cronin, aged 9, left hospital in September after undergoing transplant in August. Surgeons at King’s conduct the operations and GOSH, a world leader in paediatric services, provide the pre- and post-operative patient assessments.
Now recovering at home in Bracknell, Charlie is finally able to digest proper food instead of being fed liquid through a tube inserted into a vein in her arm. Charlie is also showing signs of what her mum describes as her daughter’s ‘massive personality’ which years of hospital visits and drug and treatment regimes had threatened to dampen.
Without the transplant, Charlie would have faced an uncertain future. Children with intestinal failure have a very low quality of life, many have no quality at all. They will be constantly ‘ill’ and daily life for the patient and their family will completely revolve around the condition
The surgery involves replacing a diseased or shortened small bowel with a healthy small bowel from a donor. It is a treatment option for children with intestinal failure who then suffer complications from being fed by TPN (total parenteral nutrition, where liquid is fed intravenously).
Dr Neil Shah, consultant paediatric gastroenterologist at GOSH, who referred Charlie to King’s for the surgery, said:
“We are all delighted for Charlie and her family, and hope her health continues to improve over the coming weeks and months. As for the service, we believe this will be a fantastic working collaboration with huge patient benefits. We are seeing increasingly complex cases, and with limited services available to these patients there is a real demand for this centre.”
Professor Nigel Heaton, consultant surgeon and director of the transplant programme at King’s, led the team which carried out Charlie’s operation. He added:
“This is an exciting development for King’s and GOSH. It has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of children in London and the south of England with this complicated and disabling condition. This is a massive step forward for both King’s and GOSH.”
The service has been commissioned after being awarded funding from the National Commissioning Group (NCG).
Ends
Notes to editors
1. For further information contact:
Chris Rolfe, corporate communications, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
Tel: 020 3299 3006, Fax: 020 3299 3006
e-mail: chris.rolfe @kch.nhs.uk
www.kch.nhs.uk
or
Hayley Dodman, Great Ormond Street Hospital press office
Tel: 020 7239 3126
e-mail: dodmah@gosh.nhs.uk
www.gosh.nhs.uk
2. The intestine is a long muscular tube in the abdomen which moves broken-down food from the stomach to the anus and sends the nutrients into the blood stream. When the intestine isn’t functioning as it should, people can become dehydrated and malnourished.
3. King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the UK’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with over 6,000 staff providing around 700,000 patient contacts a year. King’s has a unique profile, with a full range of local hospital services for people in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark as well as specialist services to patients from further afield. The Trust is recognized internationally for its work in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, cardiac and haemato-oncology. King’s also plays a key role in the training and education of medical, nursing and dental students with its academic partner, King’s College London. For more information, visit www.kch.nhs.uk
4. Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust is the country’s leading centre for treating sick children, with the widest range of specialists under one roof. With the UCL Institute of Child Health, we are the largest centre for paediatric research outside the US and play a key role in training children’s health specialists for the future.
