One person passes away, 6 lives are revived: Fragments of life stretching thousands of kilometers
From the departure of one person, 6 lives were revived. Organ donations have traveled thousands of kilometers to bring life to the three regions.
From an organ donor after brain death, 6 lives in the three regions of North - Central - South have more opportunities to continue. Behind that journey is a breathtaking race of doctors and nurses to regain every beat and keep intact the "fragments of life".
Night's emergency
At 0:23 on October 1, 2026, the Emergency Department, E Hospital received a patient who drowned in a deep coma, purple all over his body, stopped breathing, and had no pulse.
The entire hospital's "red alert" was immediately activated. Doctors urgently resuscitated and stopped circulation by chest compressions, cardiac prophylaxis, and electroacoustic shock. After moments of tension, the patient's heart beat again.
However, the prolonged lack of oxygen caused serious damage to many organs. E Hospital immediately organized an inter-specialized consultation with the participation of Emergency, Intensive Care, Cardiology, and Diagnostic Imaging experts, along with leading experts such as Prof. Dr. Nguyen Quoc Kinh, Chairman of the Vietnam Anesthesia and Resuscitation Association, and Prof. Dr. Nguyen Gia Binh, Chairman of the Vietnam Association of Emergency Resuscitation and Poison Control.
The most modern resuscitation measures are being implemented, including ECMO, continuous blood filtration and command hypothermia to protect the brain. Thanks to active resuscitation, heart, liver, and kidney functions are gradually maintained under the support of the ECMO system.
According to MSc. Dr. Le Thi Thuong, Department of Internal Intensive Care and Toxicology, in a state of severe circulatory impairment and multiple organ damage, VA-ECMO becomes an important "salvation", helping to maintain blood flow and blood pressure to organs, limiting cell damage due to lack of oxygen. Thanks to that, heart and kidney functions gradually recover, and vasopressors are minimized.
However, brain and lung damage due to drowning and severe lack of oxygen is irreversible.
When one person's life becomes the hope of many people
After many continuous consultations day and night, experts determined that the patient had fallen into brain death.
On October 2nd, after being consulted by the hospital, the family made a difficult but humane decision: agreeing to donate organs of relatives to save patients waiting.
That is also the wish of the patient when he was alive - after death, he can donate a part of his body to bring life opportunities to others. Now, his family has fulfilled that wish for him.
In the early morning of October 4th, the National Coordinating Center for Human Organ Transplantation in coordination with E Hospital organized an emergency online meeting with hospitals in all three regions of North - Central - South. The goal is to race against time, ensuring that donated organs are taken, transported and transplanted in the best conditions.
In the operating room of E Hospital, before starting the multi-organ removal surgery, the teams spent a solemn minute to pay tribute and bid farewell to the donor.
At about 10:13 am on October 4th, the heart was removed and quickly transported to Viet Duc Hospital for transplantation for a severe heart failure patient, who was on a ventilator and supported by ECMO.
The liver was transported to Central Military Hospital 108. The two kidneys traveled hundreds, thousands of kilometers by air, successively to Gia Dinh People's Hospital and Hue Central Hospital. The two corneas were transferred to the Central Eye Hospital.
From a operating room in Hanoi, "fragments of life" have gone to many hospitals, connecting the three regions of the country.
In particular, in the process of maintaining brain-dead donors, the operation of VA-ECMO requires strict control of each hemodynamic index, blood gas, temperature and balance between anticoagulants and the risk of bleeding. This stability is decisive in ensuring the quality of tissues and organs before transplantation.
Between the line of life and death, a departure has opened up new life opportunities. Six lives are given more hope; thousands of kilometers are no longer a distance, but become a journey of love.
Life, therefore, is not really lost. Life is entrusted, continued and spread – from North to Central, from Central to South, through the beats of compassion.
See the original here
