At 4 PM on December 6, Children’s Hospital 2 held a press conference regarding the successful liver transplant for a 2-year-old patient… The liver transplant was a resounding success! The doctors involved in the surgery provided additional details…
After more than 15 hours, from 8 AM to 11:30 PM on December 5, the major surgery for the patient Lê Ngọc Xuân Quý (23 months old) was completed. The liver was transplanted from his mother, Võ Thị Ngọc Hạnh (31 years old), residing in District 12, Ho Chi Minh City.
Little Xuân Quý, weighing 11.7 kg, was suffering from end-stage liver failure due to congenital biliary atresia. Prior to this, doctors had performed surgery to connect the intestines to the liver to allow bile to flow directly into the intestines.
According to the plan, the medical team would remove both lobes of the child’s liver and then take a portion of the mother’s liver for transplantation.
The major surgery was performed by a team of 5 surgical and anesthetic experts from Saint-Luc University Hospital (Belgium) along with 60 professors, doctors, and nurses from Children’s Hospital 2 and other hospitals in the city such as Bình Dân, Nhân Dân Gia Định, and Medic.
4 Hours of Tension in the Operating Room…
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Doctors at Children’s Hospital 2 performing the liver transplant for Xuân Quý |
At 8 AM on December 5, the patient was moved to the operating room.
At 10:40 AM, Professor Otte (Belgium), Professor Trần Đông A, and other specialists made the first incision to expose the mother’s liver.
In the adjacent operating room, at 10 AM, Xuân Quý was also moved in for surgery.
By 12:20 PM, the team responsible for the surgery on Xuân Quý, led by Professor Reding (Belgium), along with the team from Children’s Hospital 2 and other specialists, began to make the incision to expose Xuân Quý’s liver.
By 3 PM, the exposure of both mother and child’s livers was completed. 45 minutes later, the doctors removed segments 2 and 3 of the left liver lobe of Ms. Hạnh (weighing 200 grams) and performed washing.
On the other side, the doctors also removed the entire liver, which had hardened and darkened, from Xuân Quý, weighing 850 grams.
At 4:30 PM, the most critical phase, the transplantation of the liver into the child, began in the adjacent operating room.
At this point, the surgical team also proceeded to close the abdomen of the mother. She was then moved to the post-anesthesia and recovery room. By 6 PM on the same day (December 5), Ms. Hạnh had regained consciousness and was transferred to the recovery room.
In Xuân Quý’s operating room, at 4:30 PM, after the mother’s liver was placed inside him, the surgeons began carefully and meticulously connecting each artery, vein, and bile duct from the mother’s liver to the child’s blood vessels and bile duct. This process continued until 11:30 PM.
At midnight, the child was transferred to the recovery room.
By 9 AM the next day (December 6), the mother’s vital signs were stable, and she was able to converse with the doctors.
As for Xuân Quý, it wasn’t until 4 PM that his vital signs stabilized, and the monitoring tubes were functioning well, with no bleeding.
The surgical process went as planned. The liver removal from the mother did not require blood transfusions as the hospital utilized a blood recovery machine (blood collected from the patient, filtered, and returned), while Xuân Quý only needed 1 unit of blood (250 ml).
Commenting on the success of the surgery, Dr. Nguyễn Hồng Thu, Director of Children’s Hospital 2, stated that liver transplantation is a highly advanced and complex technique. Currently, the Belgian specialists and the recovery team at Children’s Hospital 2 must continue to closely monitor the patient’s condition.
4 Years of Preparation for the Liver Transplant
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To successfully perform the liver transplant for the 2-year-old patient, the doctors at Children’s Hospital 2 had to prepare for 4 long years… |
It is known that to carry out the first liver transplant in southern Vietnam, Children’s Hospital 2 had been preparing for 4 years.
Specialist doctors were sent to study in Belgium and France. In October 2005, professors and experts from Belgium, who were transferring liver transplant techniques to Children’s Hospital 2, came to inspect the hospital’s preparations regarding donor and recipient pairing…
From the Vietnamese side, the Ministry of Health also sent a delegation of experts to evaluate 7 key areas: from technical expertise to selecting patients, sourcing the liver, and organizational work…
Dr. Trần Đông A was the liaison between foreign experts and Children’s Hospital 2. Dr. A continuously traveled to the organ transplant center in Belgium to observe and gather information about transplants.
Since the beginning of the year, every two weeks, Professor Trần Đông A organized screenings of videos showcasing liver transplants in Belgium for the hospital’s medical team, covering everything from liver procurement, washing, to transplantation….
Due to the significant contributions of the Belgian specialists, the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee decided to award the Ho Chi Minh City Medal to Professor Reding and a certificate of merit to Professor Otte. The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health also awarded certificates of merit to three other surgeons.
This is the first liver transplant in southern Vietnam and the third liver transplant in the country. It is also the first successful liver transplant for the youngest patient to date.
To prepare for the liver transplant, the total surgical cost was approximately 3 billion VND, of which 2.5 billion VND was for medical equipment funded by the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee.
NHẬT PHƯƠNG
