MOTHER-of-three Michelle Kelly has been given a new lease of life thanks to a new transplant service being offered at Oxford.

Mrs Kelly, 46, received a bowel transplant after a successful eight-hour operation at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital.

Oxford has been named as one of the UK’s two centres for adult intestinal transplants, a relatively new type of surgery in this country, with previous surgical techniques struggling to overcome the combined problems of organ rejection and infection.

Mrs Kelly, from the Isle of Man, had become ill during a holiday in Turkey and developed a blood clot that destroyed most of her bowel. Unable to eat normally, she was left having to rely on liquid food given intravenously. With the process taking 12 to 14 hours a day, it meant the life she knew before the clot looked no longer possible.

The transplant operation at the Churchill, however, means she has started to eat food normally again.

Mrs Kelly, who had the operation in February, is still recovering at the Churchill.

She said: “When my consultant raised the idea having a transplant operation, I couldn’t believe it. Being on TPN (total parenteral nutrition) meant having to be on a machine 12 hours-a-night.

“The operation has given me my life back.”

Oxford Transplant Centre, part of the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust, last year carried out about 170 transplants and is one of the world’s most active centres for the transplantation of the pancreas.

But Mrs Kelly is only the second patient to have undergone an intestinal transplant in Oxford.

Consultant surgeon, Prof Peter Friend, said: “For a small number of patients, like Michelle Kelly, we can now provide an effective treatment for those in whom the more conventional treatment of intravenous feeding is no longer possible.

“This kind of transplant is as important as kidney transplantations were to dialysis patients 20 years ago.

“Gaining designation from the Department of Health to carry out intestinal transplantation is a major development for the transplant service in Oxford, as well as an important step for the expansion of this new and highly specialised service in the UK.”

ORH Trust chief executive, Trevor Campbell Davis, said: “This development, as one of only two centres in the UK, is a recognition of our growing national and international expertise in organ transplantation.

“It provides an important service for appropriate patients, who are now being offered a surgical solution to a life-threatening problem.“ The other designated centre is in Cambridge.