Source:
https://scmp.com/news/hong-kong/society/article/3077334/post-surgery-complications-claim-life-young-hong-kong-lung
Hong Kong/ Society

Post-surgery complications claim life of young Hong Kong lung transplant patient at centre of public search for donor

  • Ng Lok-ching, 24, died a month after the successful operation at Queen Mary Hospital
  • Few Hongkongers have registered as lung donors and only lung transplants were performed last year, hospital consultant says
Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam is the only facility in Hong Kong capable of performing lung transplant operations. Photo: Winson Wong

A 24-year-old Hong Kong woman who received a successful lung transplant after a public campaign for a donor last month passed away on Friday morning due to post-operative infections, according to medical sources.

Ng Lok-ching died one month after undergoing surgery at Queen Mary Hospital, where she was admitted with a rare medical condition.

Her doctors said Ng’s body had been unable to produce sufficient blood cells for years, a condition known as severe aplastic anaemia (SAA). She developed complications following a blood transfusion last December, and remained in critical condition.

The parents of lung transplant patient Ng Lok-ching went public in February seeking a donor for their daughter. Photo: Sam Tsang
The parents of lung transplant patient Ng Lok-ching went public in February seeking a donor for their daughter. Photo: Sam Tsang

One complication was pulmonary veno-occlusive disease (PVOD), which resulted in heart failure and blockages in the veins of her lungs. Doctors said the condition was so rare that less than one person per million suffer from it.

Ng had taken part in track and field activities and joined dancing groups while in primary and secondary schools, but was forced to discontinue those activities because of anaemia.

She had briefly worked full-time after graduating from Hong Kong’s Lingnan University, but her condition deteriorated and she had been unable to live normally ever since.

Ng’s family made an emergency appeal to the city on February 21 for a lung donation, as she could only be kept alive by a machine following lung failure. Her doctors also made her case the most urgent of all patients in the city awaiting a transplant.

“A lung transplant is her only hope. [Ng’s medical condition] cannot be cured by any medications,” Dr. Cally Ho Ka-lai, lung transplant consultant at Queen Mary Hospital, said at the time.

A suitable donor was eventually located and Ng underwent a 10-hour operation five days after the public plea.

As of Monday, the health department had 321,826 registrations in the centralised organ donation register.

But according to Yan See-wan, a consultant at Grantham Hospital, few have registered as lung donors and only seven lung transplants were performed last year.

She said patients on average had to wait 16 months for a suitable lung transplant, while about one-fifth die before receiving one.

A lung transplant can only come from a deceased patient whose blood type and body weight match the profile of the patient. Long waiting times and post-surgery complications face those in need of transplants.

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 for the procedure.