Doctors at Bai Chay Hospital in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh successfully saved a female teenager, who had been hospitalized in a critical state after a sharp object had pierced her left chest, heart, and lung.

N.T.H., 17, from Quang Ninh’s Quang Yen Town had a hole of a 1.5-centimeter radius in the Koch’s triangle area on her left chest, with rapid pulse of 110 times per minute and blood pressure plummeting to 60/50mmH upon her hospitalization, Bai Chay Hospital said on Thursday.

The teen patient underwent X-ray and ultrasound scan right at the bed.

Ultrasound results then showed that her pleural cavity had over 1,500ml of blood and the pericardium had more than 500ml of blood, accumulating a total amount of lost blood of more than 2,000ml.

H. was immediately transferred to the surgery room under the red alert protocol within the hospital.

The surgery, which required the collaboration between the hospital’s departments of neurosurgery – thoracic, surgery anesthesia, intensive care, and biochemistry, finished successfully after about 1 hour and a half, during which the patient received five units of blood and three units of fresh plasma.

The girl has been in good health and of sound mind three days after the operation.

Results of postoperative tests showed that the patient had neither infection nor metabolic disorder.

Doctor Hoang Van Quyet from the orthopedic department at Bai Chay Hospital said that heart injury is one of the most serious damages that cause the heart to stop beating quickly and irreversibly due to acute blood loss.

Some patients with heart injuries had dead brains due to prolonged anemia, Dr. Quyet said.

The emergency surgery of heart injury is thus one of the most complex surgical emergencies, the doctor added, requiring experienced surgeons with the ability of carrying out accurate diagnosis, and quick, skillful and correct surgical technique on the beating heart.

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