A woman in her 20s suffering from congenital liver and bile disease on Tuesday became the fourth person in Japan to die after receiving an organ transplant from a brain-dead donor, hospital officials said.
The woman, who was staying at Hokkaido University Hospital after a liver transplant in November, died at around 5:58 a.m. Tuesday due to blood poisoning caused by the bacteria known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
The woman had received a liver from a brain-dead donor at Chiba University Hospital. The donor is the 17th to have organs harvested since the procedure was legalized in 1997, in accordance with the Organ Transplant Law.
According to the Japan Organ Transplant Network, her death is the fourth out of the 67 patients who have received transplants from brain-dead donors.
The three others are a woman in her 50s from Saga Prefecture, a female teenager from Hyogo Prefecture, and a 7-year-old girl from the Kanto region who underwent a small-intestine transplant. The woman from Saga Prefecture and the teenager from Hyogo Prefecture both underwent liver transplants at Kyoto University Hospital.