A special liver transplant lasting 14 hours was performed at Beijing Tsinghua Chang Gung Hospital on Monday on a high school student with serious liver disease.

The recipient was Nie, from central China's Henan Province, who received organ tissue donations from both his father and sister.

Six months ago, Nie suddenly felt a sharp pain when he was preparing for his college entrance exam. He was sent to hospital and diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and fluid in the abdomen. Months of treatment did not improve his condition and liver transplantation was deemed by doctors to be the only effective way to save his life.

However, because Nie is very tall (1.9 meters), the volume of liver he needed to transplant is much larger than an average patient. Nie's elder sister insisted on giving her brother a donation along with her father. At that time, her own daughter was only recently born.

“I stopped breastfeeding when I knew my blood type was the same as my father and were a match for my brother. Our blood type is C. We must save my brother,” the sister said.

“We decided to cut the father's left half of the liver, which accounts for 25 percent of the father's liver volume. We cut 30 percent of the entire liver of sister. The combination of father and sister's liver can reach 52 percent of the ideal liver volume, which is enough to support the patient's physiological function's needs,” Dong Jiahong, executive director of liver surgery at the hospital, told CCTV.com

The transplant team said the surgery was successful and all of Nie's liver functions were recovering well. He is expected to leave hospital in two weeks.

(Cover Photo: VCG Photo)