11-Day-Old Infant Born With Liver Outside His Body Dies Battling Rare Condition

An 11-day baby boy, born with a rare condition that caused a part of his liver to be outside of his belly button, has died. Keanu-Jay Brown was born with omphalocele, a birth defect of the abdominal wall.

The child died last week at a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand, reported The Otago Daily Times.

Infants with this defect will have intestines, liver, and other organs sticking outside the body through the belly button. The organs are covered in a thin, nearly transparent sac that hardly ever is open or broken.

Though the surgery was performed to repair the omphalocele, the child was then diagnosed with an extremely rare condition Type 4 Laryngeal Cleft. That meant that the food he took goes into his lungs instead of his stomach. This is due to an incomplete fusion of the tissue between the larynx and the esophagus.

Though the family already knew that Keanu-Jay had omphalocele during pregnancy, the life-threatening Type 4 Laryngeal Cleft had come as a shock just a few days after he was born.

It was only discovered when nurses struggled to insert tubes down his throat. "I don't think we've really taken it in. So much has been going on for us since he's been born. We've been told all of this and I don't think we've really had time to actually soak it in I suppose," his mother Sam Ayers told Otago Daily Times.

He was then moved from Christchurch Women's Hospital to Auckland Starship Hospital for another surgery to fix his condition.

However, further scans revealed that his condition was unsurvivable and very severe. The family was then asked to keep the child comfortable till he died.

Though they decided to seek medical help from the U.K, the country went into lockdown, and the family returned to Christchurch.

Last Thursday, during his return trip on the flight, the child's oxygen levels dropped so low that he couldn't be rescued despite the best efforts. "A very sad ending to his fight for life. He was such a warrior," Ayers was quoted by the news outlet.

The family is also thankful that they could give him a nice send-off Sunday. "Keanu had a very nice send-off with all his siblings and close family around him."