Surgeon saves girl's life with ping pong ball during vital liver transplant

The £1 plastic ball prevents Mackenzie Argaet's new liver from pressing against vital arteries, which could kill the two-year-old.

 Dr Albert Shun wanted to create a barrier because the adult-sized organ would otherwise be too large for her infant body.

Joy: Recovering Mackenzie Argaet, two, hugs her mother Letice Darswell

The piece of sports equipment will now remain in the Australian girl's body for what is expected to be the rest of her life.

Her parents, Letice Darswell and Guy Argaet, were surprised by the move but are thrilled by the recovery of their feisty daughter, who was born with rare disorder biliary artresia, which destroys the ducts that carry bile from the liver.

'We didn't get told about the ping pong ball until after the operation,' Miss Darswell told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

'I couldn't believe my ears when Dr Shun told us that he had used a ping pong ball to not only support the liver but to keep it from pressing down on vital blood vessels.

'The doctor has performed a miracle. The whole family is now referring to him as "Dr God".

‘She is so normal now. She is a happy kid.

‘She is playing with her brother Lachlan and learning to ride a bike, something she wasn't able to do before.’

But Mackenzie, who today grinned as she ran around the garden of her family home in Canberra, is yet to find out about the simple item keeping her alive.

Dr Shun, who works at Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital, said her new liver will in time grow around the ping pong ball without causing any infections.

'There shouldn't be any complications,' he said today.

'We've had to use a portion of an adult sized liver because here in Australia we have a low donor rate, which means we have to be adaptable.

'The ping pong ball was the perfect answer. It won't deteriorate, it won't create an infection - and it was cheap!'

Dr Shun had been using a sponge to keep Mackenzie's liver separated from the blood vessels but said 'there was no way I could close her up the way it was.'

So he telephoned his wife from the hospital and asked her to hurry around to Woolworth's supermarket and buy him some table tennis balls.

Before she had her operation the toddler’s liver was so scarred with cirrhosis that she would have died without a transplant.

X-ray: The circular outline of the ping pong ball can be seen on the left of the image. It was inserted to stop Mackenzie's liver pressing against her arteries

Miss Darswell said that in the weeks after Mackenzie was born she and her partner watched with growing sadness as their daughter's health declined.

'She had the liver of an alcoholic,' said Miss Darswell. 'We could see her looking more and more sick as the days went by.

'Unless something could have been done for her we were afraid she would die.

'When a liver match was found we were overjoyed, but there was still the problem of having to have it cut down to size because Mackenzie was so tiny.'