Hong Kong doctors issue lung donation appeal to save young woman whose life hangs in the balance
- Ng Lok-ching, 24, fights for survival on life support after her lungs and heart stopped working
- She does not want to die, says mother, vowing to stand by her ‘until the last moment’
Doctors in Hong Kong have issued an emergency appeal for a lung donation to save the life of a 24-year-old woman with a rare medical condition.
Ng Lok-ching’s lungs and heart have stopped working and she has been on life support at Queen Mary Hospital since last Saturday.
In an emotional plea for help, her mother said she was fighting for survival and did not want to die.
Life-saving double lung transplant gives woman a second chance
Ng was diagnosed with pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD), which causes blockages in the veins of her lungs and heart failure.
“The only cure for this condition is a lung transplant,” said Eric Tse Wai-choi, a clinical professor at the University of Hong Kong’s faculty of medicine.
Her case was the most urgent of all patients waiting to receive a transplant in the city, doctors said.
Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam is the only institution in Hong Kong capable of performing lung transplants. More than two dozen patients are waiting there for the procedure.
The transplant could only come from a deceased patient whose blood type and body weight matched the patient’s profile, doctors said. Long waiting times and post-surgery complications faced those needing the operations, said Yan See-wan, a consultant at Grantham Hospital in Hong Kong.
[Ng] told me she is having a very difficult time and doesn’t want to die. As a mother, I will support her until the last moment
Patients on average waited more than a year for a suitable lung transplant, while about 20 per cent would pass away before receiving one, she added. “Lung conditions are usually very unstable,” Yan said.
Ng’s suffered complications when she developed shortness of breath following a blood transfusion last December. Doctors said she had been deficient in blood cells for years, a condition known as severe aplastic anaemia (SAA).
A machine kept her vital functions running, but that carried the risk of getting an infection at any time from an exposed wound, doctors warned.
The patient’s mother, who asked to be identified as Mrs Ng, described a girl fighting to stay alive, even looking the condition up herself on the internet.
“She told me she is having a very difficult time and doesn’t want to die,” said Mrs Ng, holding back the tears.
“As a mother, I will support her until the last moment.”
Hong Kong had only six registered organ donors per million people in 2018, according to the International Registry on Organ Donation and Transplantation, a global database tracking organ-related operations.
The country with the highest rate was Spain, which had 48 donors per million people that year.
