Japanese Doctors to Assist Vietnam’s First Lung Transplant

Vietnamese doctors are going to perform the country’s first lung transplant on a 6-year-old boy later this month, with help from Japanese colleagues. A team of about 30 people, including surgeons and anesthesiologists, will perform the operation at a hospital in Hanoi to treat the boy from lung fibrosis, a disease that causes respiratory failure, Kyodo News quoted a source from Okayama University Hospital as saying. The operation is scheduled for February 21 and the boy will receive parts of lungs from his father and another relative. The hospital said there is no other way to save the boy. Okayama University Hospital received a request from Vietnam last June to send experts to assist with the surgery. The hospital has conducted more than 160 lung transplants, making it the most experienced in the area in Japan. In 2011, it also supervised the first successful lung transplant in Sri Lanka. Vietnamese doctors started performing organ transplants in 1992 and have conducted around 1,400 operations on kidneys, livers, hearts and bone marrow. (VnExpress Feb 16)