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Vietnam’s first lung transplant succeeds

By Nam Phuong February 23, 2017 | 06:35 pm PT

Doctors during the 11-hour procedure. Photo courtesy of 103 Military Hospital

Hanoi doctors and their Japanese colleagues treated a boy with lung parts from his father and uncle.

Vietnam’s first lung transplant on a seven-year-old boy with doctors from Japan has so far been a success, a Vietnamese doctor said.

Doctors performed the transplant on Tuesday at Hanoi's 103 Military Hospital, saving the boy from lung fibrosis, a disease that causes respiratory failure.

The boy, who has been severely undernourished, received parts of lungs from his 28-year-old father and 30-year-old uncle.

He was put under intensive care after the 11-hour operation and has stabilized and so have his donors.

Doctors said there is no other way to save him.

The surgery was assisted by experts from Okayama University Hospital. The hospital has conducted more than 160 lung transplants, making it Japan's most experienced facility in the area, Kyodo News reported.

Vietnamese doctors started performing organ transplants in 1992 and have conducted around 1,400 operations on kidneys, livers, hearts and bone marrow.

In 2015, doctors performed the country’s first transplant of both heart and lungs on a 40-year-old man, with organs from a donor in Ho Chi Minh City, but the patient had died after five days.

> Roughly 16,000 patients await organs in Vietnam