A traffic accident had left the 57-year-old man in critical condition with serious brain trauma. He had been taken to Phu Tho Provincial General Hospital in a Level-3 Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), with loss of reflexes and complete mechanical ventilation.

Although the doctors at the hospital tried to save him with resuscitation measures, no miracle occurred. After the medical council concluded that the patient was in a brain-dead state, the hospital met the patient’s relatives and spoke about organ donation.

“We didn’t face difficulties when giving consultancy on organ donation. They (the family) understood the significance of this,” a representative of the hospital told VietNamNet on June 21.

After the family agreed to the donation, necessary legal procedures were followed. The hospital urgently contacted the National Organ Transplant Coordination Center at Viet Duc Hospital in Hanoi and other hospitals where patients had been waiting for donated organs.

At first, it was expected that one patient at Hue Central Hospital would get a heart transplant and two patients would receive kidney transplants at Phu Tho Hospital. However, final tests found that the compatibility of the donor and the recipients could not be met. 

Doctors had to then urgently look for people who could meet the requirements to receive the donated organs. They found two such patients at Hue Central Hospital.

Soon after legal procedures were fulfilled and the organ transplant plan was completed, the donor was brought to the operation room for surgery. The kidney retrieval was completed on the evening of June 20 at Phu Tho Hospital and the organ was carried to Hue Central Hospital, where the kidneys were transplanted into two patients who had kidney failure. The operations were conducted in the evening.

Phu Tho Hospital successfully conducted a kidney transplant case in 2015, but this was the first time it had conducted transplantation with kidneys from a brain-dead person.

Between 2010 and 2022, organ donations from 10 to 11 brain-dead people each year occurred in Vietnam.

Linh Trang