Ping Pong Balls Saved Her Life

Posted by Miss Cellania in Medicine on September 25, 2008 at 11:28 am


2-year-old Mackenzie Argaet was born with biliary artresia. Her liver developed cirrhosis and she received a liver transplant. Dr Albert Shun, from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, Australia, performed the surgery.

But after inserting a portion of the adult-size liver in the little girl, Dr Shun discovered it was too big and was placing pressure on her blood vessels which could have been fatal.

Having heard about the use of ping-pong balls in operations overseas, he decided to test their suitability in transplant surgery.

“I rang my wife and asked her to go to Big W and buy me some ping-pong balls,” he said.

The balls hold the liver away from the arteries until the swelling from surgery goes down. In Mackenzie’s case, the balls were left inside, and the liver will grow around them.

Unaware she has a foreign object inside her body, little Mackenzie is now running around like every toddler her age.

Her parents Letice Darswell and Guy Argaet are thrilled their daughter is well after she was so seriously ill from birth.

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COMMENT

8 comments to "Ping Pong Balls Saved Her Life"

  1. Thomas
    September 25th, 2008 at 11:38 am

    That's awesome. I thought ping pong balls were just good for raising sunken sailboats and for doing really cool things when chucked into a camp fire.

  2. Fuzz
    September 25th, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    So what happens if she falls and the balls crack? Broken ping pong balls can fracture and shard. I would imagine that wouldn't be nice to have inside you.

  3. PrincessPi
    September 25th, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    I'm assuming since she had a liver transplant that the doctors put her on some type of anti-rejection medication, which would keep her body from attacking the ping pong balls as a foreign body as her immune system typically would under normal circumstances, but wouldn't the process of sterilizing the balls prior to implanting them - done in an autoclave - have exploded the balls? They're full of gas, which, under high temperatures and pressures (which is what an autoclave does - it's a pressure cooker) - expands.

    Just curious how the docs got around that.

  4. Minnesotastan
    September 25th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    The insertion of lucite balls (essentially ping-pong balls) into the pleural space was a common procedure in the pre-antibiotic era as treatment for pulmonary tuberculosis. The balls (or, alternatively, sponges, oil, other inert substances) compressed the lung, putting it "to rest" or at least decreasing ventilation so that the tubercle bacilli would not be coughed out. The lucite balls were commonly retained for decades without "rejection", although they sometimes migrated or eroded into other structures.

  5. Zombie
    September 25th, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    So .... um... can she .... make a pearl now? I mean, isn't that what happens with oysters? They put in a foreign object and leave it there .... and ....

  6. Retrokatze
    September 26th, 2008 at 5:01 am

    @Fuzz:

    Tha ball is inside her body. If she falls so hard as to crack the ball, the shards won't be a problem anymore.

    @PrincessPi: They most definitely put her on Immunosupressives. As a matter of fact, she'll be taking them her whole life.

  7. Otto
    September 26th, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    I'm not sure on the immunosupressives thing.

    I've got some titanium screws in my knee, my father-in-law has total hip replacement, my mother-in-law has plastic heart valves and my boss had both knees replaced. We're not on immunosuppressives. I dunno..I'm not a doctor.

  8. Jim Clark
    October 28th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    Madness, but worthwhile i guess!


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