A four-month-old baby, weighing 6.2kg, becomes Malaysia’s youngest liver transplant recipient at UMMC after a critical pre-surgery collapse.
PETALING JAYA: A multidisciplinary team at the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) made medical history by performing a liver transplant on a four-month-old boy weighing just 6.2 kilograms, the youngest and lightest recipient in Malaysia.
The high-risk procedure on 25 November 2025 faced a critical moment that nearly cost the infant his life before surgery began.
Consultant Hepatobiliary Surgeon Assoc Prof Dr Koh Peng Soon was quoted in a statement by UMMC, he described the procedure on the critically ill four-month-old as particularly challenging due to the baby’s small size and pre-surgery cardiac complications.
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“This case proves that with a cohesive team and rapid clinical decisions, we can achieve the best outcomes for the patient’s life,” he said.
UMMC also highlighted the successful completion of a high-risk and complex paediatric liver transplant, demonstrating the nation’s capability in handling intricate organ surgeries.
Born healthy as the youngest in his family, the baby’s condition suddenly worsened due to fulminant liver failure of unknown cause, and was first treated at Muar Hospital before being urgently referred to UMMC, where a liver transplant became his only chance of survival.
“The liver donor was the patient’s biological mother, a 38-year-old Vietnamese woman and mother of five children (including two from a previous marriage residing in Vietnam). Out of maternal love, she voluntarily stepped forward as a living donor to give her child a second chance at life.
“On the day of the surgery, while the mother was in the operating theatre for organ retrieval, the baby suddenly collapsed and became unresponsive in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU),” UMMC added.
It said that the surgery on the mother was immediately halted, and the PICU team performed aggressive resuscitation for over an hour to save the baby.
“Thanks to the medical team’s expertise, his condition was stabilised, allowing the liver transplant surgery to resume once he was fully under control.”
UMMC added that the patient’s family, from a middle-income background, faced difficulties covering the high cost of surgery, but financial assistance from the CCEP Foundation ensured the life-saving treatment could proceed without obstacles.
UMMC highlighted that the success was due to close collaboration among various specialists, marking it as one of the most complex paediatric liver surgeries ever, given the baby’s young age, small size, and critically unstable condition before surgery.
The teams involved included the PICU, Paediatric Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Hepatopancreatobiliary (HPB) surgery specialists, Paediatric surgery specialists, Plastic surgery specialists, Radiology specialists, and the Nursing team.
