UK’s first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer is a success
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A young woman is cancer-free after undergoing the UK’s first liver transplant for advanced bowel cancer. Bianca Perea, a 32-year-old trainee lawyer from Manchester, was given the surgery in the hope it could offer a potential cure for her deadly disease.
The procedure has been a huge success and together with other treatments: targeted drug therapy, chemotherapy and surgery; she now has no signs of cancer anywhere in her body. Ms Perea first visited her GP in Wigan, where she lives, after feeling a bit constipated and bloated.
She was referred to her local hospital where she had blood tests and a stool sample taken. I was 29 at the time and I was never bloated to the extent I couldn't do up my clothes or my trousers. It was just a little bit uncomfortable. When medics noted high levels of blood in her stool, she was referred for a colonoscopy and biopsy.
Ms Perea was given the shocking news in November 2021 she had stage four bowel cancer – the most advanced kind – which had spread to all eight segments of her liver. She told the PA news agency: “I actually didn’t have really bad symptoms at all.
“I’d noticed a change in my bowel habits and also bloating and a little bit of pain in my stomach. “I was 29 at the time and I was never bloated to the extent I couldn’t do up my clothes or my trousers. It was just a little bit uncomfortable. “But every time an advert on television would come up about cancer, even if it wasn’t bowel cancer, it would kind of jump out of the TV at me.
