SEATTLE – For the first time in his young life, 8-year-old Alfie Bautista of Portland, Ore., may be able to eat solid foods.
Alfie was born with a condition in which his intestines were unable to push food through his body normally. He is recovering after a seven-hour operation at Children’s Hospital &Regional Medical Center to replace his small intestine. The procedure could help remove him from the intravenous tube that has fed him all his life.
“It went very smoothly,” said Dr. Jorge Reyes, who led the surgery Thursday. Reyes had performed about 200 of the operations before joining Children’s 21/2 years ago.
“We hope he will have a much happier life now,” Alfie’s mother, Abie Bautista said.
Alfie, a second-grader, is small for his age and had to be careful when playing with his 2-year-old brother and 15-month-old sister.
And every night, he has had 10 hours of intravenous feeding. His transplant became urgent because his veins were getting too damaged to continue inserting feeding lines into them.
Intestine transplants aren’t common, only about 150 a year in the U.S., compared with nearly 22,000 other solid-organ transplants, such as hearts, kidneys and livers.
Alfie’s new intestine came from a child donor whose identity was not revealed due to privacy restrictions.
Before his surgery, even eating a Popsicle could cause Alfie to become sick. Solid food could have caused a dangerous bowel obstruction.
“I’ll be able to have lollipops and after that, beefsteak!” he said, clutching his blue teddy bear. “Then after that, Popsicles and ice cream!”
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