Vietnamese doctors have successfully transplanted six organs from one donor to four patients for the first time.
Tran Binh Giang, head of Hanoi-based Vietnam-Germany Hospital announced on December 24 that the donor was a 40-year-old brain dead patient. According to his family, he had expressed the desire to donate organs to hospitals when he was still healthy.
His organs, including two lungs, two kidneys, a liver and a heart, were donated and came to the needy via Ninh Binh Red Cross Organisation and the National Center for co-ordinating Human Organ Transplants. The patient who received his lungs is only 17 years old and was being treated at Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi. He is diagnosed with the last stage of Pulmonary Langerhans cell histiocytosis and may die soon.
Dr Nguyen Huu Uoc said, “Most of his lungs have been ruined and can’t function anymore. A lung transplant is his last chance to live.”
The transplant was carried out immediately after the organs were taken out at 9 am on December 12. The 14-hour operation is a success and the patient recovered well in the next 10 days. However, his condition is still serious due to deteriorated health. As of December 24, he no longer needed a ventilator.
The patient who was given the heart transplant is a 60-year-old man with dilated cardiomyopathy. He was estimated to be able to live for only one month without a new heart. A 63-year-old woman with liver cancer and a 41-year-old man with kidney failure also went through successful operations.
A 15-year-old boy in HCM City who is in the last stage of kidney failure was also given a kidney in time.
Giang said this was the first time the hospital successfully carried out the lung transplant operation from a brain-dead donor with only Vietnamese doctors. This is also the first time a record number of six organs were taken out from a donor.
“Hundreds of employees worked overnight to take out the organs and started the operations,” he said.
As of December 21, Vietnamese doctors completed 3,200 kidney transplants, 105 liver transplants, 27 heart transplants and three lung transplants. Doctors at Vietnam-Germany Hospital carried out 756 organ transplants.
On February 26, five organs were taken out and two lung transplants were completed at Hospital 103 and Hospital 108.
Source: Dtinews