Doctors laud successful liver transplant in Hanoi

National Taiwan University Hospital superintendent Lin Fang-yue, center, and head of the transplantation team, Lee Po-huang, third left, pose with some of the medical team that successfully performed a liver transplant for a Vietnamese woman in the Viet Duc hospital in Hanoi, during a press conference at the hospital in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: CNA

National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) doctors who performed the first successful adult liver transplant in Vietnam declared the operation a success at a news conference at NTUH yesterday.

Following invitation from Hanoi's Viet Duc hospital, an 18-member NTUH team set off for Hanoi to operate on a patient who is suffering from cirrhosis as well as early-stage liver cancer.

The doctors said at yesterday's news conference that a 47-year-old woman, surnamed Nguyen, has recovered well since her operation two months ago.

"She is now out of the danger zone as far as post-operative infection is concerned," said Lee Po-huang (李伯皇), a surgeon at NTUH and the leader of the medical team that performed Nguyen's operation.

Liver from a living donor have been successfully performed for more than a decade in Taiwan and are now considered a "routine procedure," with survival rates in excess of 90 percent, excluding patients who are afflicted with advanced kidney cancer, surgeon Hu Rey-heng (胡瑞恆) said, another member of the team.

Five liver transplants had been attempted in Vietnam, including one spearheaded by doctors from Taipei's Veterans' General Hospital, but none of the five patients, all children, had survived.

Operating of Taiwan presented challenges, the doctors said, because the operating rooms at the Viet Duc hospital were not equipped with high efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters, resulting in a slightly sub-optimal level of sterility in the room. The language barrier also caused minor misunderstandings between the doctors and the Vietnamese medical staff supporting them, they said.

Fortunately, no serious incidents occurred during the 11-hour operation, the doctors said.

Lee that the laws in Vietnam have yet to define brain death, so organ donation is only possible from live donors who choose to give up a portion of their liver or one of their two kidneys. In this case, Nguyen received a liver transplant from her nephew, who gave up 60 percent of his liver.

Nguyen Tien Quyet, director of the Viet Duc hospital, has been quoted in the Vietnamese state media as saying the hospital would continue to attempt more complicated surgery, such as heart transplants, in the wake of the success.