Illustrative image (Photo: VNA)Hanoi (VNA) – , despite
difficulties, has recorded numerous achievements this year, giving hope to
thousands of patients nationwide.
According to Trinh Hong Son, director of the Vietnam National
Coordinating Centre for Human Organ Transplantation under the Ministry of
Health, in Hanoi’s major hospitals alone, about 6,000 patients need a kidney
transplant and more than 1,500 patients are on the waiting list for liver transplant.
Over 6,000 people need cornea replacement, while heart and lung transplants are
critical to save hundreds of others.
In Vietnam, organ donation is yet to be accepted by the mass, hence a
scarcity of tissues and organs for transplantation, particularly those from
brain-dead patients. As of August 31, the number of brain-dead and circulatory-dead
donors reached 223, accounting for 6.6 percent of the total donors. The
majority of organs used in transplantation in Vietnam are from living donors.
On October 16, a tissue bank under the Hanoi-based Viet Duc Hospital,
the first of its kind in Vietnam, became fully operational. To date, it has
preserved nearly 1,000 skull fragments, heart valves, sinews, and blood
vessels.
On December 12, nearly 500 doctors and medical staff from Viet Duc
hospital, without the help of foreign experts, carried out four organ
transplantations simultaneously to four patients. All the organs were donated
by a brain-dead man from the northern province of Ninh Binh.
The first case was the transplant of two lungs on a 17-year-old
patient, which lasted 14 hours. Vietnam has so far successfully carried out
three transplants of lungs but this is the first time Vietnamese doctors
performed the transplant of two lungs at the same time successfully.
The donor’s heart was used for a 60-year-old patient, the liver for a
63-year-old woman and one kidney for a 41-year-old man.
The other kidney was transported to the Nhi Dong 2 Hospital in Ho Chi Minh
City for another kidney transplant on a 15-year-old boy.
With this success, Viet Duc Hospital set a new record of the number of surgeries
to take and transplant the most organs at the same time.
Vietnam has so far conducted 3,200 kidney transplants, 105 liver
transplants, 27 heart transplants and only three cases of lung transplants.-VNA
Source: VietnamPlus
