Happy heart, liver transplant woman counts her blessings

A woman recovering from a heart and liver transplant marathon which marked a surgical milestone in Hong Kong, says being alive and healthy are life's greatest blessings.

Jackie, 27, would leave hospital within two weeks as she had made good progress, said Dr Chan See-ching, a surgeon on the Queen Mary Hospital team which performed the operation.

During the 20-hour operation, which started at 6.30am on August 20 and ended at 2am the next day, Jackie received a brain-dead donor's heart and liver. But then surgeons transplanted her failing but still useful liver into a 62-year-old man with liver cancer, marking the city's first combined heart and liver transplant with a sequential liver transplant. He is to leave hospital in about a week.

'We shouldn't always complain about our lives,' Jackie said. 'It is a blessing that we are still breathing every day. We should also be pleased that we are able to do daily routines like eating, walking and even going to the washroom.'

Chan said finding a liver donor who also had a healthy heart for Jackie had been a stroke of luck. Following news of the landmark operation, the hospital had transplanted two more livers donated by the families of two people who had just died.

'We have received a positive response from families in relation to organ donations,' Chan said. 'Our liver donation rate is only about four per one million population, compared to about 20 in the US and the UK and even 30 in Spain. The rate in Japan is no more than one.'