Shameful organ-donation rates push Hong Kong to excel in groundbreaking transplant surgery
Hong Kong's shamefully low organ-donation rate has inspired groundbreaking surgery in the city, but still hundreds die on transplant waiting lists. Stuart Heaver investigates a cultural reluctance to saving strangers.
One of Hong Kong's most eminent transplant surgeons is busily sketching on a yellow notepad in the staff canteen on the second floor of Queen Mary Hospital (QMH).
"Live donor liver transplant is a lot like jazz," says Professor Chan See-ching, carefully. "It's best if you improvise."
The chief of liver transplantation at QMH is describing the groundbreaking operation undertaken earlier this summer to save the life of 59-year-old Cheng Chi-ming. Cheng had been at death's door in the hospital's intensive care unit before a 40-plus medical team spent more than 10 hours utilising partial organs from two of his daughters in one simultaneous live liver donor transplant (LLDT).
Chan decided to merge the two partial organs into one complete liver and then transplant the whole into the father. This reduced the risk by making the highly complicated transplant a single procedure.
"Please do not tell the patient but that brainwave actually came to me in theatre," he jokes, and explains how four pairs of highly skilled hands simultaneously fashioned and merged a complete organ on a bed of ice. "This was a world first. No one had ever done this," he says, without a trace of hubris.