By Xinhua
Xian (China) : A Chinese hospital said Sunday its team of doctors has successfully carried out heart, liver and kidney transplants on a patient in a marathon operation in a medical first for the country.
The operation lasted some 16 hours and ended early Sunday morning. The 47-year-old female patient has been doing fine, said Dou Kefeng of the Xijing Hospital hepatobiliary surgery department.
The hospital in Xian, capital of the northwestern Shaanxi province, is known for conducting the first face transplant in China, and the world’s second, in 2006.
The multi-transplant patient was diagnosed with uraemia and liver cancer when she came to the hospital Jan 8.
However, doctors found a dilated cardiomyopathy, a disorder of the heart muscle, while planning the kidney and liver transplants. This meant she required a new heart first.
Dou said the patient was in critical condition and could have died before the Spring Festival that falls Thursday if the transplants weren’t undertaken.
The hospital decided to conduct the surgery at the request of the patient and her family. It wrote off the operation cost as the family from a small Shaanxi Province village could not afford to pay.
More than 30 experts were involved in the complicated operation. Heart surgeons and cardiologists first spent more than three hours to transfer a healthy heart. Liver experts then operated for five hours before the kidney transplant.
The entire operation took 1,000 stitches to cover the incisions made during hte surgery.