Girl, 7, Leaves Hospital After Spleen Surgery
Jamie Fiske, one of the world’s youngest liver transplant recipients and a national symbol of the organ donor issue, was released Saturday from University of Minnesota Hospital where she underwent surgery last week for the removal of an enlarged spleen.
The 7-year-old was to spend the night in the Twin Cities with her parents, Charles and Marilyn Fiske, before returning to the hospital for a checkup today. She was expected to return to her home in Bridgewater, Mass., after the examination.
Jamie was less than a year old when she received a new liver in 1982 after a dramatic and highly publicized nationwide appeal by her father for an organ donor.
She was flown to Minneapolis last weekend after suffering several bouts of internal bleeding in recent weeks.
Dr. John Najarian, chief of surgery at University of Minnesota Hospital, said the child’s spleen was about eight times the size of a normal spleen and that appeared to be the cause of the internal bleeding.
“Everything else looks perfectly fine,” he said after Monday’s operation.
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