Associate Professor Nguyen Huu Uoc, Head of the Department of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, Viet Duc Hospital, said the lung transplant technique is very complex.
Lung donors are mainly brain-dead patients who have undergone mechanical ventilation, anesthesia, trauma… so they are infected with many respiratory tract bacteria.
Most recipients have chronic lung disease, so the lungs are often infected, dirty, filled with pus, and stuck to the chest wall.
`More or less, the lungs of the donor and recipient are infected, requiring very complicated preparations for surgery and lung transplantation,` said Dr. Uoc.
Technically, lung transplant surgery is very complicated, goes through many stages, requires a large number of doctors, divides many teams, and needs to coordinate synchronously with each other.
The principle of organ transplantation is that when the team performs a thoracotomy on the donor and assesses the lungs well, a transplant can be performed;
`When the lungs are removed from the donor’s chest, they must be properly preserved while waiting for transplantation into the recipient’s chest,` Dr. Uoc explained.
A lung transplant at Viet Duc Hospital.
With donated lungs, the process of removing and cutting to protect the bronchus is difficult.
For the recipient, depending on the medical condition, some people need a partial lung transplant, some people need a whole lung transplant.
The surgical process of transplanting into the recipient requires many steps, from preservation, sterilization, transportation… to be synchronized.
`A heart transplant is as difficult as a lung transplant, three or even five times more difficult, because of the complexity, many times, many surgical cycles,` said Dr. Uoc.
Viet Duc Hospital has so far performed 5 lung transplants, all from brain-dead donors.
Often after transplantation, the lungs swell.
Doctor Uoc advises patient (striped shirt) after lung transplant.
In particular, post-operative care is very strenuous.
In the first few days after transplantation, the lungs were edematous, the patient was treated with an ECMO system (external blood oxygenation), and was given many antibiotics.
A lung transplant patient at Viet Duc Hospital must undergo a 10-month post-operative period before being able to leave the hospital.
According to Dr. Uoc, not all patients can receive a lung transplant.
The world has so far recorded more than 4,000 lung transplants.
Doctor Uoc rates the success of a lung transplant at 85-90%, but the chance of a patient’s long-term survival is only half that of a heart transplant.
`Patient 91` – the most severe case of Covid-19 today, has been assigned a lung transplant by the Ministry of Health.
Le Nga