China News Service, Shanghai, October 13 (Chen Jing, Huang Xing) Reporters learned from Renji Hospital affiliated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine (hereinafter referred to as Renji Hospital) on the 13th that Xia Qiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, led a medical team to Uzbekistan to provide medical technical assistance. Chinese and Uzbekian experts worked together to successfully complete Uzbekistan's first minimally invasive living donor liver transplant.
In this cross-border assistance, Xia Qiang's team not only brought advanced minimally invasive liver transplantation surgery technology, but also conveyed a set of mature liver transplantation medical concepts.
Ms. Dilnosha, 42, from Namangan Oblast in eastern Uzbekistan, was diagnosed with acute-on-chronic liver failure at the V. Vakhidov Surgical Medical Center (Vakhidov Center) in Tashkent, the capital of the country. This is a serious life-threatening disease. It is affected by acute triggers on the basis of chronic liver disease and can easily induce multiple organ failure, with a mortality rate as high as 30%-50%.
Experts from the Wahidov Center sought help from the liver surgery team at Renji Hospital in Shanghai, China. The hospital quickly coordinated resources and established a multidisciplinary support team including liver surgery, anesthesiology, and critical care medicine. Under the leadership of Academician Xia Qiang, they traveled thousands of miles to Uzbekistan.
While in Uzbekistan, the Renji Medical Team led by Academician Xia Qiang, together with the Uzbek team led by Professor Seedmurad Ismailov and Professor Fazlidin Bakhritdinov of Wahidov Medical Center, successfully completed the country's first minimally invasive living donor liver transplantation.
According to Renji Hospital, previously adult living donor liver transplant surgeries in Uzbekistan generally used the traditional laparotomy method, which resulted in large postoperative wound areas and long recovery periods. This cross-border cooperation innovatively uses minimally invasive liver transplantation technology, which greatly reduces body trauma and is more conducive to the rapid recovery of the donor after surgery. The surgical incision is strictly controlled within 8 centimeters, ensuring medical safety and surgical efficacy while taking into account the postoperative appearance.
A letter of thanks from the patient’s family to the Chinese doctor. (Photo courtesy of Yanji Hospital)
The donor liver for this transplant came from patient Dilnosha's 19-year-old son Sadobek. Currently, Dilnosha's vital signs are stable after surgery, and various indicators are recovering well. Her family specially asked Dr. Wufang to send a Chinese letter of thanks to the Renji Hospital team, praising the Renji experts for their superb medical skills and bringing hope and strength to the family.
"Living donor liver transplantation involves both the donor and the recipient. We must not only do our best to treat patients with end-stage liver disease, but also put the safety of healthy donors in a prominent position." Academician Xia Qiang said that in this overseas technical assistance, the team has always regarded donor protection, rigorous preoperative evaluation, and multidisciplinary integrated collaboration as the core concepts of assistance.
It is reported that this is not the first time that a liver transplant program from China has benefited overseas patients. In 2019, Professor Xia Qiang's team went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to guide the country's experts in completing the first two children's living donor liver transplants in the country's history. "This time, we not only hope to complete an operation with the local team, but also look forward to bringing the team's mature diagnosis and treatment concepts to the Belt and Road countries." Academician Xia Qiang pointed out.
During the visit, Renji Hospital and Wahidov Medical Center signed a memorandum of cooperation. The two medical institutions will steadily promote multi-dimensional cooperation in the future, including carrying out special training for medical personnel, organizing joint discussions on difficult transplant cases, deepening experience exchanges on perioperative management and long-term follow-up, and exploring scientific research collaboration in children's liver transplantation, donor safety protection, and long-term prognosis of transplantation.
