After 13 hours of surgery, Ho Chi Minh City’s first adult liver transplant on a 53-year-old woman ended successfully at Cho Ray Hospital on October 12, Dr Nguyen Tan Cuong, head of the hospital’s surgery department, said at a press conference this morning. The operation was conducted by Cho Ray doctors and their South Korean counterparts in ASAN Medical Center, Cuong said, adding that it took the same duration as a similar case performed in South Korea. The recipient of the liver is Mrs. Cung Thi Kim Dinh, who suffered from liver failure since 2010, and the donor is her 22-year-old son D.H.L, a student of information technology at the HCMC Foreign Language and Informatics University. Two hours after the operation, which began at 8:25 am last Friday and ended on 10:30 pm the same day, the son recovered and later ate some soup and drank some milk. Two days after the surgery, Dinh practiced walking and managed to walk to the next room to visit her son. Tests of blood and liver functions on Dinh after the surgery showed that her health is in normal state. She needs more care for about 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, the son will continue to be followed in isolation room for 7-10 days and will be discharged in around a month. After 6-8 weeks, the son will have a regenerated liver that will be 60-80 percent of his original liver, Dr. Son said.

As previously reported, a 15-member group from the South Korean center arrived in HCMC on October 11 to join their Vietnamese counterparts for the transplant surgery a day later.