Filed under: Toddlers, Medical conditions, Weird but trueI'm a big fan of finding new uses for things, and this is a great example. A two-year-old Australian girl, born with biliary artresia, was undergoing surgery to receive a liver transplant when Dr. Albert Shun found a problem. It seems that the adult-size liver was too big and was putting pressure on the girl's blood vessels -- a potentially deadly situation.Dr. Shun came up with a creative way to solve the problem. "I rang my wife and asked her to go to Big W and buy me some ping-pong balls," he said. The doctor used the ping-pong ball to keep the liver off the arteries and relieve the pressure. "There shouldn't be any complications. We are in a unique situation in Australia because we have a low donor rate so we have to be adaptable," he said.The young girl is now up and running about like a normal two-year-old. "She is so normal now. She is a happy kid," said the girl's mother. Sounds like a good use of a ping-pong ball to me.Gallery: Amazing and bizarre X-rays Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Posted on Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:00:00 EST at http://www.parentdish.com/2008/09/29/pin...irls-life/
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