Little did then-23-year-old Lee Hsiu-ying (李秀英) know that her decision in 1991 to pursue heart transplant surgery — due to complications of cardiac muscular lesions from a severe cold — would make her the longest living heart-transplant patient in Asia 27 years later.
Speaking on Tuesday at a book launch with the doctor who performed the surgery, Wei Cheng (魏崢), Lee said that at the time she had paid the cold no mind, expecting it disappear on its own.
The cold grew worse and what started out as difficulty breathing soon developed into myocarditis, she said, adding that her father took her to many hospitals hoping for a cure.
“All the doctors we went to told us that my condition could not be cured,” Lee said, adding that it was not until they came to Wei that they were told that it could, but she would need a heart transplant.
Medical technology was not as advanced in those days and everyone was more conservative, Lee said, adding that her father had persuaded her that it was nonetheless an opportunity.
Within three weeks of giving her consent for the operation, the hospital alerted Lee that a donor organ was available: a heart from a 45-year-old man.
The transplant has meant that Lee has been on anti-rejection drugs for the past 27 years and, as a result, has developed breast cancer and cervical cancer due to reduced immunity, but Lee said she has never given up on life.
“The heart of a 45 year-old man lives within me and I have no right to give up,” Lee said.
Wei, a renowned cardiology expert who has performed more than 400 heart transplants over his 40 years of medical practice, said he hoped his book would teach people more about one of the most important organs in the human body.
About 80 to 100 people undergo heart transplants in Taiwan each year and the survival rate for the first year after surgery is between 60 percent and 80 percent, Wei said.
The heart usually pumps out 50ml to 80ml of blood with every pulse and when it does not function properly, other organs are affected, the most severe case being heart failure, Wei said, adding that heart transplants are the only method of treatment when no medication or surgery can prevent heart failure.
The survival rate drops the longer patients live, falling to between 50 percent and 70 percent after five years, and between 40 percent and 50 percent after another 10, Wei said, adding that the world record for longest survival after a heart-transplant stands at 33 years.
Wei said he hoped that Lee would break that record.
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