He Xiaoshun's team at Sun Yat-Sen First Hospital successfully performed the world's first "no ischemia" kidney transplant

Recently, Professor He Xiaoshun’s team at our hospital’s Organ Transplantation Center successfully performed the world’s first “ischemia-free” kidney transplantation. This is the first time that the team has successfully applied the world's first "ischemia-free" organ transplantation concept and technology to the field of kidney transplantation after performing the world's first "ischemia-free" liver transplantation in July 2017.

The success of this operation is another major technological breakthrough in the field of organ transplantation. It marks that kidney transplantation has entered the era of "hot transplantation" from the traditional "cold transplantation" after liver transplantation. It also shows that the "no ischemia" concept and technology pioneered by He Xiaoshun's team has the conditions to be widely used in other fields of organ transplantation.

Kidney transplantation enters the era of "hot transplantation" for the first time

The operation was completed in only 3 hours, and the patient's indicators returned to normal the next day after the operation.

According to Wang Changxi, director of the Organ Transplantation Department of our hospital, the patient who received the first "ischemia-free" kidney transplant this time was a 47-year-old male patient from Dongguan, Guangdong, who was an ordinary enterprise employee.

At the beginning of 2016, the patient suddenly felt general fatigue and edema of both lower limbs. He was subsequently diagnosed with uremia and began to receive hemodialysis treatment. During the treatment, the patient also suffered from serious complications such as massive gastrointestinal bleeding.

On April 9, Professor He Xiaoshun's team performed the world's first "ischemia-free" kidney transplant for this patient in the East Branch of our hospital. The transplanted kidney maintained continuous blood perfusion in the donor's body and during the entire process of acquisition and transplantation.

According to experts, the operation was very successful and took only 3 hours to complete. The patient had urine discharge immediately after the operation. His blood creatinine (the main indicator for evaluating renal function) returned to normal levels on the second day after the operation. He could eat as usual on the third day and will be discharged from the hospital in the near future.

Professor He Xiaoshun said that "ischemia-free" transplantation technology allows the kidneys to avoid serious damage caused by traditional kidney transplantation due to interruption of blood flow during organ procurement, organ cold preservation, and reperfusion after kidney implantation. This greatly reduces the risk of postoperative complications and subsequent immune reactions for patients, and will significantly improve the long-term prognosis of patients.

The world's first "ischemia-free" transplantation concept and technology

In the future, it will also be applied to organs such as hearts and lungs to achieve comprehensive "heat transplantation"

The blood flow of an organ is inevitably interrupted during transplantation, and the resulting ischemia and reperfusion injury seriously affects the efficacy of transplantation and even leads to transplantation failure. Despite half a century of efforts by scientists around the world, this "congenital defect" in organ transplantation has not yet been fundamentally solved.

In July 2017, Professor He Xiaoshun's team successfully applied the "no ischemia" concept and technology in the field of liver transplantation for the first time through a series of technical research and concept innovation, achieving ideal transplantation of organs under physiological conditions, thus avoiding ischemia-reperfusion injury of the transplanted liver, and having incomparable advantages over traditional liver transplantation.

Judging from the prognosis of 16 cases of "non-ischemia" liver transplantation that have been performed, the postoperative liver function of patients who received "non-ischemia" liver transplantation was significantly better than that of traditional surgery. The patients recovered quickly, significantly reduced the risks of liver transplantation, protected the recipient's heart, lungs, kidneys and other functions, and reduced the occurrence of life-threatening "post-reflow syndrome".

Academician Wang Xuehao of the Chinese Academy of Engineering believes that "this new technology can be extended to other organ transplants, and is expected to reconstruct the theoretical and technical system of organ transplantation and bring the development of this subject into a new era."

Nancy, president of the World Transplantation Society, believes that this technology “can be promoted to other countries around the world and has broad clinical application prospects.”

Due to his major innovations in organ transplantation, the team leader He Xiaoshun was awarded the "Top Ten Scientific and Technological Innovation Figures of 2017" jointly awarded by CCTV, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Chinese Academy of Engineering, China Association for Science and Technology, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and National Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

He Xiaoshun revealed that this technology and concept will also be applied to the transplantation of other organs such as hearts and lungs in the future. He believes that "no ischemia" will greatly improve the prognosis of patients and truly realize the transformation of organs from the "cold transplantation" era to the "hot transplantation" era.

“Big names” in the Western transplant community form a team to observe and learn

Sino-European cross-border cooperation will promote the application of "no ischemia" concept technology to the world

In March this year, Professor Robert J. Porte, director of the Transplantation Center of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and an internationally renowned liver transplant expert, led a team of six people to our hospital to learn the "ischemia-free" liver transplantation technology pioneered by Professor He Xiaoshun's team.

The University of Groningen Transplant Center is one of the largest transplant centers in the world. All possible organ transplant surgeries can be performed at UMCG, including multiple organ transplants in one operation.

The Porter team observed and learned the entire process of two "ischemia-free" liver transplant surgeries in our hospital. They were impressed by the medical technology of our hospital's organ transplant center: "Your surgeries are so wonderful!" He said, "Seeing reports of this kind of surgeries online is completely different from seeing them on-site. After four days of on-site inspections, I felt even more impressed and the impact was even more shocking."

This observation and learning directly led to the cooperation between the Transplantation Center of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the Organ Transplantation Center of our hospital. The Porter team signed a cooperation agreement with the Organ Transplantation Center of our hospital. The two parties will work closely to better promote and apply this new technology to the world.

------Excerpted from the News Center of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University