First successful heart-heart transplant in Vietnam for a patient in multivisceral insufficiency
The Viet Duc Hospital announced, on August 13, having successfully completed the first simultaneous heart-poumons transplant in Vietnam, offering a new chance of life to a patient with multivisceral insufficiency.
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| First successful heart-heart transplant in Vietnam for a patient with multivisceral insufficiency produced by the doctors of the Viet Duc hospital. |
| Photo: Viet Duc/CVN hospital |
The recipient, Trân Nhu Q., 38, suffered from interauricular communication with severe pulmonary hypertension, treated in 2011 by percutaneous occlusion. The absence of regular monitoring led, early 2025, to rapid degradation to Eisenmenger syndrome, irreversible right heart failure and serious tricuspid regurgitation, involving its vital prognosis in the very short term.
Faced with this critical situation, the medical team indicated a simultaneous transplant of the heart and the lungs. As soon as a compatible donor has been identified, a multidisciplinary coordination protocol has been activated, combining cardiology-thoracic, anesthesia-resuscitation, surgery, rehabilitation and nutrition …
The intervention, lasting seven hours, required the assistance of an extracorporeal circulation to temporarily replace heart and lungs. The surgeons have adapted the size of the grafted lungs, chosen to connect the main bronchi rather than the trachea in order to optimize the infusion of the sutures, and used advanced hemodynamic monitoring techniques to limit the risk of complications.
After the operation, the patient benefited from immunosuppressive treatment and close surveillance. Four weeks later, its recovery is excellent.
According to the hospital director, the Dr Duong Duke Hung, this success marks a major advance in mastering multivisceral transplants in Vietnam. It is an important milestone in complex transplants in Vietnam and opening up new therapeutic perspectives for the terminal patients of cardio-pulmonary diseases.
The heart-poumons transplant is one of the most complex surgical interventions, with around 100 cases carried out each year in the world, due to the scarcity of donors, technical difficulty and high risk of complications. In pioneering countries like the United Kingdom or the United States, survival rates to one year vary from 72% to almost 90%.
This Vietnamese success testifies to the high level of expertise of national medical teams and strengthens the country’s position in the field of advanced transplants internationally.
VNA/CVN
