On February 23, Okayama University Hospital announced that it successfully transplanted the lung of a girl under age 6 who had been declared brain dead in a hospital in Yamagata Prefecture, into a girl under age 10.

Born with respiratory failure, the recipient girl was diagnosed as suffering from idiopathic interstitial pneumonia eight months after birth. Then she was registered with the Japan Organ Transplant Network in January 2019 and awaiting an opportunity for a transplant. The transplant surgery, which was performed by Dr. Takahiro Oto, a professor at Okayama University Hospital Organ Transplant Center, began at 3:42 p.m. on February 23, and successfully ended about seven hours later, around 11:00 p.m. If there are no complications, she is expected to leave the hospital in about three months. Her parents said: “Considering the feeling of the donor girl’s family, we have no words to say. We hope our daughter will earnestly strive to survive, with the intention of living not only her own life but also her donor’s life.”

After the surgery, Dr. Oto said at a press conference: “A limited number of organs are donated in Japan. I will continue to work hard to give hope of living to children awaiting transplant operations.” Okayama University Hospital conducted its first lung transplant from a brain-dead patient in January 2002. The February 23 surgery was its 100th case of brain-death lung transplant and its 190th case of lung transplant, if the number of live lung transplant cases is included.