HÀ NỘI — Doctors from the Hà Nội-based Việt Đức hospital on Monday announced to successfully conduct the first transplant of two lungs from a brain-dead donor on a cancer patient.

Việt Nam has so far successfully carried out three transplants of lungs but this is the first time Vietnamese doctors performed the transplant of two at the same time successfully.

This was also the first time the Vietnamese doctors could conduct the complicated transplant without assistance from foreign experts, said hospital director Trần Bình Giang at a press briefing on Monday.

The transplant of lung was considered the most complicated among organs, according to Doctor Nguyễn Hữu Ước, head of the hospital’s Cardio-vascular and Thoracic Surgery Department.

Việt Nam has so far conducted 3,200 kidney transplant operations, 105 liver transplant operations, 27 heart transplant operations and only three cases of lung transplants.   

The first two transplants of lungs were performed by Vietnamese doctors and their foreign partners at Military Hospitals 103 and 108 in Hà Nội.

The 17-year-old boy has suffered from Pulmonary Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis, an uncommon cystic interstitial lung disease without complete treatment measures. He has been treated for five years at different hospitals and was in very bad condition before the transplant.

The lungs were donated from a 40-year-old man from northern Ninh Bình Province.

It took the doctors 14 hours to perform the life-saving surgery.

Over the past ten days, the patient’s health conditions started to show signs of recovery, proving technical success of the surgery, according to doctor Ước.

Doctors perform lung transplant at the Hà Nội-based Việt Nam-German Hospital. — VNA/VNS Photo

New record

Together with the lung transplant, doctors from Việt Đức hospital performed at the same time a heart transplant for a 60-year-old man, a liver transplant for a 63-year-old woman and a kidney transplant for a 41-year-old man.

Meanwhile, the Pediatrics Hospital No2 in HCM City conducted another kidney transplant on a 15-year-old boy with the kidney transported from Việt Đức hospital.

All the organs were donated by the brain-dead man from Ninh Bình province.

In order to carry out the multi-organ transplant operations, the Việt Đức hospital had to mobilise the participation of more than 100 doctors to perform the surgery to take out all donated organs from the donor in six hours.

Meanwhile, at the same time, four other surgery rooms at Việt Đức hospital and one at Pediatrics Hospital No2 in HCM City were ready to receive and transplant the organs to the patients.

With this success, Việt Đức hospital set a new record to perform surgeries to take and transplant the most organs at the same time.

Over the last five years, there were 19,300 donors that were brain dead or had no heartbeat, according to the National Coordination Centre for Organ Transplantation.

In 2013, the centre was set up because organ donation in the country had been limited.

After a seven-year-old girl from Hà Nội, Nguyễn Hải An, donated her cornea to two people – a 73-year-old woman and a 42-year-old man – in February of this year, the centre received thousands of organ and tissue donor registrations.

This year, the centre has co-operated with Vietnam Airlines to transport tissue and organs on its flights for free. — VNS