One week, 5 liver transplants were successfully performed

(Dan Tri) - In just one week, doctors at 108 Military Central Hospital successfully performed 5 liver transplants from living donors, saving the lives of patients with acute liver failure and liver cancer.

On August 30, the 108 Military Central Hospital reported that in the last week of the month, doctors revived five lives thanks to five liver transplants from living donors. The patients were all patients with acute liver failure and liver cancer, and their only chance of survival was a liver transplant.

Doctors simultaneously performed 5 liver transplants in one week, including planned liver transplants, emergency liver transplants, and liver transplants from living donors.

In one week, doctors performed 5 liver transplants, reviving 5 lives (Photo: Provided by the hospital).

A typical case is a male patient in Bac Ninh with acute liver failure, whose 19-year-old son donated his liver to save his father.

The male patient said that for about 2 weeks now, he has felt tired, had poor appetite, increased jaundice, and dull abdominal pain.

He was then diagnosed with acute liver failure on the basis of chronic hepatitis B. He received medical treatment at a lower-level hospital for 4 days without improvement.

The patient was transferred to the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases for treatment from August 13. However, his condition gradually worsened and he was in a hepatic coma and was intubated on August 21. The patient was transferred to the 108 Central Military Hospital.

Mr. NHN shared that his father's condition was very serious. The doctor informed that a patient in a liver coma only had 72 hours to receive a liver transplant, while his father had been in a coma for more than a day, so the family decided to donate his liver to him.

When the tests were done, only his mother and Mr. N. were compatible, but he himself did not want his mother to donate her liver, because she had just given birth to a baby more than 2 months ago. Mr. N. decided to donate part of his liver to his father.

On August 24, doctors successfully performed a liver transplant on the patient, using the donated liver of his son.

In another case, a 60-year-old male patient in Ninh Binh was diagnosed with multifocal recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma 2 years after surgery. During a routine health check-up, the patient was found to have a recurrent liver tumor even though he had no fever, no abdominal pain, no jaundice, and no bowel disorders.

Lieutenant Colonel, Associate Professor, Dr. Vu Van Quang, Deputy Head of the Department of Hepatobiliary - Pancreatic Surgery, 108 Central Military Hospital, said that with the disease recurrence, the patient was advised to have a liver transplant.

Although liver transplantation in patients who have had previous liver resections is often more complicated and difficult because of adhesions from previous surgery, and the left vascular and biliary systems have been removed, making the shaping and anastomosis particularly difficult, without transplantation, the patient will have little chance.

Associate Professor Quang said that in the liver transplants last week, doctors took liver pieces from donors using laparoscopic surgery to transplant them into recipients.

This is considered one of the most complex surgical techniques performed by laparoscopic surgery, requiring high level of experience, modern and synchronous equipment and machinery.

This method brings many benefits to liver donors such as: minimally invasive intervention helps reduce post-operative pain better than open surgery, faster recovery time, high aesthetics while the results are equivalent to open surgery.

Since the first laparoscopic graft removal surgery in Vietnam was performed at 108 Military Central Hospital in November 2021, the hospital has successfully performed over 90 laparoscopic graft removal surgeries.

In the world, only a few Liver and Gallbladder Transplant Centers in countries with developed medicine such as the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea can perform laparoscopic surgery to obtain liver transplants from living donors.

Source: https://dantri.com.vn/suc-khoe/mot-tuan-5-ca-ghep-gan-duoc-thuc-hien-thanh-cong-20250831000908359.htm