Woman gets new kidney after hospital botch-up

Can Tho native Hua Cam Tu smiles after recovering from kidney transplant surgery. Dr Bui Duc Phu, director of the Hue Central Hospital, who performed the operation, examines her. — VNS Photo Courtesy from Hue Hospital

THUA THIEN - HUE — Doctors at the Hue Central Hospital successfully transplanted a kidney to a 37-year-old woman who lost both of them in a botched surgery last year when doctors at Can Tho General Hospital, while removing a diseased kidney, sliced and damaged the healthy one.

They completed the procedure with two surgeries – both on Tuesday — as Hua Cam Tu was unable to produce much urine after the first.

The team of doctors led by Dr Nguyen Duc Phu, the hospital director, transplanted the kidney donated by an unnamed samaritan from her native Can Tho city following a four-hour surgery that finished at 11:30am.

Things looked good with the transplanted kidney producing urine almost immediately. But an hour later it stopped, and they decided to perform the second surgery, which they completed at 4:30pm.

She began to produce urine normally, all tests produced normal results, and Tu managed to eat some food.

Until the transplant, since her disastrous operation in December, Tu had to have dialysis three times a week.

She was sent to the Hue hospital by the Can Tho General Hospital in early January where she waited for donors until recently. Two donors, whose identities have been withheld by the hospital, voluntarily offered to donate a kidney each, and luckily one of them was a match.

Tu had been diagnosed with hydronephrosis of the left kidney – an enlargement as a result of a urinary tract obstruction – and had to undergo laparoscopic surgery at the Can Tho hospital on December 6.

Surgeons accidentally sliced into the healthy one and caused it to bleed uncontrollably, forcing its removal. — VNS