Organs of drowning victim transplanted into four young children

The organs of 4-year-old drowning victim Shoham David Turgeman are transplanted into four children at Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikvah.

In a marathon series of operations that began the night of August 14 and continued into the next day, the boy’s heart was transplanted into a 3-year-old boy and his liver into a 6-year-old girl. Two boys ages four and 13 each received a kidney. The surgeries were carefully coordinated and required many medical staff of varying specialties.

Some 700 organ transplants have taken place in children and teens at Schneider since its founding in 1992.

Dr. Ofer Schiller, a senior physician in the hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit, says that the heart recipient, 3-year-old Ofek Cohen, arrived at Schneider in end-stage heart failure. Before the transplant, he had been connected for months to a Berlin Heart ventricular assist device, which takes over the pumping function of the heart until a donor heart can be found.

“The notification that a heart was available for Ofek came as a surprise, and as with every transplant under these circumstances, the staff and family were joyful and excited, as well as full of sorrow for the family of the donor. The noble parents of the boy who died in such a tragic way provided a miracle and chance for life for Ofek and his family,” Schiller says.

Ronit, Ofek’s mother, says she is “eternally grateful to this wonderful family, who in the worst moment in their life chose to give my child life.”