Heather McNamara , a seven-year-old girl suffering from a rare, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor was released from a New York hospital after surviving a risky operation led by Japanese doctor Tomoaki Kato, whose team temporarily removed six of her organs to remove a tennis ball-sized tumor from her abdomen.



Kato told a news conference that his team of seven surgeons and eight other clinicians removed the girl’s large and small intestines, liver, pancreas, spleen and stomach Feb. 6 while three other surgical teams worked to remove the tumor, which was entangled with vital organs and essential blood vessels.

The girl’s liver and large and small intestines were re-implanted but the pancreas, spleen and stomach were damaged by the tumor and were judged unsuitable for re-implantation.

According to Kato and his team, the 23-hour operation was the first of its kind to be performed on a child. The team successfully conducted a similar operation, the world’s first, on a 63-year-old woman in March last year.

‘‘It was a serious surgery but her recovery is good. There were no big problems during the operation,’’

McNamara, from Long Island, said she is ‘‘good’’ when asked how she felt and is looking forward to going home and playing with her sister and her dog, Angel.

Heather McNamara was diagnosed with a rare, inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor in early 2008. She had surgery to remove it from her stomach and then underwent chemotherapy, but the tumor continued to grow throughout her abdominal cavity.

While Heather McNamara is no longer in immediate danger, she will have to adapt to her new life. Without a stomach she will have dietary restrictions. The lack of a pancreas will make her diabetic and the absence of a spleen will possibly make her more susceptible to certain infections, the doctor said.

Kato’s groundbreaking approach, known as auto-transplantation, can be used in place of traditional transplantations for some patients, precluding the need for a donor organ, according to Jean Emond, chief of transplantation at the Columbia University Medical Center.

A Tokyo native, Kato has performed nearly 100 surgeries involving multiple organs on adults and children since 2001.