The young girl was revived thanks to the lungs of a strange man

Mobilizing powerful forces to perform a 12-hour lung transplant

The person who received two lungs is a 21-year-old female patient from Bac Kan, a student at a university in Thai Nguyen. The young girl had to drop out of school midway because she unfortunately had end-stage lung disease. This is pulmonary lympholeiomyomatosis (LAM), also known as perforated lung disease, which is a rare disease and usually occurs in young women.

“Every time I come home from work and call my child’s name, I just wait for my child’s voice to echo. I feel very heartbroken, thinking that one day I might lose my child. I also thought of the saddest situation. can happen.

I thank the doctors and nurses who donated my child’s two lungs so he could live and pursue his dream,” the 21-year-old patient’s mother emotionally shared.

Dr. Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc, Head of the Respiratory Department, Central Lung Hospital, said that from August 2023, the patient will be put on the waiting list for a lung transplant because the prognosis is very poor, with lung tissue necrosis forming cocoons. , the need to breathe oxygen 24/7. On February 7 (Tet 28), the patient was just discharged from the hospital but had to be readmitted to the hospital one day later due to difficulty breathing.

Perforated lung disease creates air cysts in the lungs, spreading and causing loss of lung function. Therefore, patients must breathe oxygen for a long time at home and always need support for daily activities. The patient’s condition is very serious and he will likely die within the next few months if he does not receive a lung transplant.

The patient has been managed and monitored at the Central Lung Hospital since 2020 and has been waiting for a lung transplant for several months because of serious damage to his lungs, severe respiratory failure, and high death prognosis.

Panoramic view of the multi-tissue surgery room – organs and work cPrepare, preserve and coordinate lungs for the Central Lung Hospital.

At 1 p.m. on February 8 (Tet 29), after receiving information about a donated lung from the 108 Military Central Hospital, the Central Lung Hospital urgently activated the lung transplant program and held a consultation to select a recipient. The patient received an organ that same night.

On the 30th of Tet, temporarily putting aside the moments of gathering with family and waiting for the transition moment, hundreds of doctors and nurses from many hospitals are busy preparing for extremely meaningful major surgery.

The Central Lung Hospital has mobilized about 80 human resources to directly participate in the transplant along with other experts from the National Organ Transplant Coordination Center, Central Military Hospital 108, Hospital E, Friendship Hospital , Hanoi Heart Hospital and international experts.

According to Dr. Ngoc, after 14 hours of assessing stable condition, the patient was extubated. On the second day after surgery, the patient received rehabilitation exercises, learned to eat on his own, and learned to sit, stand, and walk on the spot.

On day 3, to help the lungs expand, doctors and nurses exercise to help the patient walk for 5 minutes. On day 4, the patient continued to learn to walk and had pleural drainage removed on both sides. The patient was able to walk continuously for 15 minutes while previously the patient could only walk 320m.

The 12-hour lung transplant was successful, making all the doctors breathe a sigh of relief.

The organ donor is a male patient (26 years old, An Giang) who suffered a severe brain injury due to a traffic accident. After 3 days of treatment at Central Military Hospital 108, the patient was diagnosed with brain death. With a heart of charity and humanity, the young man’s family agreed to donate tissues and organs to save the lives of many other dangerous patients.

Among them, 2 lungs are coordinated to the Central Lung Hospital.

Dr. Dinh Van Luong, Director of the Central Lung Hospital, said that the surgery was performed on February 9 (30 Tet) and lasted 12 hours. 12 hours after surgery, the young girl woke up and took the first breaths of her new lungs amid tears of happiness from both the patient and the doctor. On the first day after lung transplant, the patient recovered well and his respiratory indicators were stable.

The success of the lung transplant shows that Vietnamese doctors have mastered top techniques in the field of organ transplantation. This is a typical achievement of the Vietnamese health sector, contributing to bringing great value to the health of patients and people.

Many doctors cried when the patient was extubated because the patient was able to live a new life with two lungs.

Lung transplant – the most complex and difficult technique in organ transplant

Organ transplant Vietnam has experienced more than 30 years with techniques for transplanting kidney, liver, heart, pancreas, cornea transplant… and a number of other body parts. In fact, lung transplantation is still a big challenge to medicine. According to assessments, lung transplant is the most difficult because of its complexity and urgency, requiring specialized techniques, close coordination and coordination.

Vietnam has successfully conducted a transplant from a living lung donor. However, lung transplantation from a brain-dead donor is much more difficult.

Because in living donors, doctors are proactive and prepared and often only take one lobe or segment to transplant to the patient. As for lung transplants from brain-dead donors, the situation is very urgent at this time, requiring resuscitation to ensure the lungs are intact before the lung transplant can be performed.

In a very short time, doctors have to perform a complex transplant. Besides, all issues such as anesthesia, post-surgery, resuscitation are complicated…, especially in the case of 2 lung transplants at the same time. .

Technically, lung transplant surgery is very complicated, takes many steps, requires a large number of participating doctors, divides many teams, and requires synchronous coordination with each other. The process of removing and preserving the lungs is also more difficult than other organs in brain-dead people.

Associate Professor, Dr. Dong Van He, Director of the National Coordination Center for Human Organ Transplantation, said that lung transplant is difficult, this is the 10th lung transplant case nationwide. If a brain-dead person can transplant a kidney to 20 people, a liver can be transplanted to 10 people, then it is estimated that for every 10 brain-dead people, only 2 lungs can be transplanted.

Therefore, lung transplants often encounter many difficulties and fewer transplants than other organs.

“If patients with kidney failure can live for 5 years, patients with heart failure and lung failure can only live a few weeks or months. They cannot live too long with us. In fact, many patients do not live. can wait for a lung transplant,” Associate Professor He said.

Therefore, he hopes that in the future, more patients will receive lung transplants as well as other organs, so that there will no longer be a situation where doctors have to watch patients gradually leave their lives.

One life ends, many lives are revived

Vietnam’s organ transplant industry has made great strides, the most difficult thing today is the lack of donor organs. Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Kim Tien, President of the Vietnamese Organ and Tissue Donation Association, said that Vietnam’s organ transplant level is on par with the region and the world, however, we do not yet have a name. on the world map of organ donation.

The rate of people registering to donate organs in Vietnam is the lowest in the world, and the rate of people donating organs after brain death is also low.

“We are amending the Law on donation, human organ tissue transplantation and body donation in the direction of amending some content to make it more favorable for organ donation campaigns. In addition, the current issue of applying information technology in Organ donation registration is not synchronized,” Associate Professor Tien said.

According to experts, the work of promoting organ donation from brain-dead donors in our country is still very difficult, due to the concept of “total death” of many Vietnamese people; Inadequacies in the policy and legal system on tissue and organ donation need to be amended and supplemented…

In Vietnam, the need for organ transplants is huge, but 90% of organ transplants are from living donors. From 2008 until now, there have been only nearly 150 brain-dead organ donors nationwide.

On average, at Viet Duc Hospital, every day there are 3-5 brain-dead people, but each year there are only 3-4 organ donations.

Organ sources are scarce, the list of patients waiting for transplant is increasing day by day. Therefore, doctors are always on duty. Any time there is a phone call, there may be an organ donor ready for a transplant. But life is colorful and no one can predict it.

Receiving an organ transplant from a brain-dead donor is a stroke of luck. If God gives it, it is okay. Some people just signed up for the transplant waiting list in the morning and got it in the afternoon, some people waited but couldn’t.

According to the National Coordination Center for Human Organ Transplantation, there are currently dozens of people in need of tissue and organ transplants to maintain life, but cannot do so because there are not enough tissue and organ sources for transplantation.

Doctors hope that people will become more open to the issue of organ donation. A life unfortunately stops, organ donation will help revive many new lives. To date, about 170,000 Vietnamese people have registered to donate organs after death. Hopefully these humane actions will spread more and more, so that more and more sick people can be revived.

(Image: Hospital provided)