By Connor McCleskey

Posted on October 17, 2013

The dire organ shortage in the UK has led doctors in West Yorkshire, England, to perform a transplant on one of the youngest donors ever. The kidneys of a five-week old baby, who died after suffering heart failure, were used to save the life of a 22-year-old woman, Samira Kauser. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Transplant surgeons typically refrain from using the organs of babies less than two months old, due to concerns about the emotional toll of asking the parents to consider organ donation. However, due to the extreme shortage of available organs, doctors are increasingly seeking organs from younger donors. Three people die every day on waiting lists for organs in the UK alone, prompting surgeons to seek new solutions to the crisis.

Other than the obvious ethical dilemma of asking grieving parents about organ donation, there are no medical reasons to not accept donations from infants. Kidneys reach their full function by the end of the third trimester, and could theoretically be transplanted into an adult at that stage. Once transplanted into an adult, the kidneys from infants function normally, though they generally do not reach the full size of a normal adult kidney.

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