Fox News' Ed Henry donates portion of his liver to save his sister

Fox News chief national correspondent Ed Henry underwent surgery Tuesday as part of a procedure to donate a portion of his liver to his sister Colleen, who has congenital liver disease. He is expected to take a leave of absence for an undetermined time.

Henry, who works out of Washington, announced the surgery on Sunday in an op-ed posted on Foxnews.com where he wrote that, "On Tuesday I will be donating approximately 30 percent of my liver to my sister at a hospital in the Northeast. … The liver is an amazing organ that will then regenerate in both me and my sister after the transplantation," adding that "I am told that within four to six weeks, both of those portions of my liver will grow back to 100 percent in each of us.”

The 47-year-old Henry, who grew up in Deer Park, said in a 2014 magazine interview that his sister, 46, ran a hair salon in Franklin Square at the time.

During an interview on "Fox & Friends" Sunday, Dr. John Galati, a liver specialist, said Henry would likely undergo a quick recovery, but that "the tough thing" with his sister is that her doctors will want "to make sure there are no surgical complications immediately. We want to see that there's no problems with rejection, with Ed’s liver."

In his Sunday op-ed, Henry — CNN's senior White House correspondent before joining Fox in 2011 — wrote that "the risk of mortality for me is extremely low — less than 1 percent, according to the doctors. I will gladly take on the small risk of what the paperwork I signed at the hospital last week calls a 'large midline incision' for the gigantic reward of having my sister around for a very long time."

He also wrote that "Colleen has allowed me to share the broad outlines of her case, [but] we are not sharing the specific details for obvious privacy concerns. But let's just say her condition has been getting worse, and she needs a quick intervention. Her liver was not diseased by alcohol; but family history involving the liver impacted her, while sparing me."