Five receive organs after Staffordshire University student dies

Five people have received vital organ donations after an art student died.

Shane Dineen, 20, who studied at Staffordshire University, suffered a bleed on the brain and died in January.

A teenage girl received his liver and one of his kidneys went to a 60-year-old man who was on a waiting list for eight years.

The team at Royal Stoke University Hospital "worked against extra challenges created by the pandemic" to facilitate the operations.

Mr Dineen's other kidney was given to a 30-year-old woman, while a 30-year-old man received his lungs and a 20-year-old man received his heart.

"Something good has come out of something truly awful," his mother Vicky Scott said, adding her son had given the recipients "the best gift".

Ms Scott, 48, from Bentilee, Stoke-on-Trent, said organ donation was not something she had discussed with her son.

"One of our friends had lost their baby due to a failed liver transplant and I knew that Shane was someone who always wanted to help, so I decided to go ahead with it," she said.

"This is the last thing he could do to help and I believe it's what he would have wanted."

The student had completed his first term at university and was "thoroughly enjoying it", his mother said.

On Christmas Eve, Mr Dineen had "a really bad headache", was vomiting and could not stand, spending three days in bed, but seemed to be "absolutely fine" until about two weeks later, Ms Scott said.

Her son started with a headache again and took paracetamol, but within 45 minutes he was vomiting and his mother then found him on the floor having a fit.

He was taken to hospital, but later died.

Kirsty Lazenby, a nurse on the Midlands organ donation services team, said Covid-19 restrictions "made it hard... to have conversations with family due to limitations on visitors".

She added: "Despite the adversities we faced, staff in A&E right through to theatres managed to facilitate the donation and Shane went on to save the lives of five people."

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