Replies to LegCo questions

LCQ4: Liver transplants

Following is a question by the Hon Yeung Yiu-chung and a reply by the Secretary for Health, Welfare and Food, Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, in the Legislative Council today (February 26):

Question:

It has been reported that in September last year, a liver transplant to be conducted in Prince of Wales Hospital was cancelled right before the operation, and the liver in question was sent to Queen Mary Hospital. In this regard, will the Government inform this Council whether it knows:

(a) the reasons for the sudden cancellation of the operation, and who should be responsible for the incident;

(b) the respective numbers of patients who underwent liver transplants at the two hospitals last year, the average length of time for which they had waited, and the current number of patients on the waiting list; and

(c) the progress of the establishment of a Central Registry for Liver Transplants by the Hospital Authority?

Reply:

Madam President,

(a) The Hospital Authority (HA) had conducted an investigation into the incident of cancellation of a liver transplant operation by the Prince of Wales Hospital (PWH) on September 10, 2002. In essence, the liver transplant team of PWH had conducted one transplant operation on September 9, and just finished another long and complicated liver surgery on the day of the incident. (By way of background, liver transplant is a highly specialised field in surgery which requires substantial support from other multi-disciplinary teams of specialists, including physicians, surgeons, clinical psychologists, radiologists and staff from the operation theatre and the intensive care unit.) According to the assessment of the Chief of Service of the Surgery Department of PWH, extra manpower would have to be mobilised that night to support an unscheduled liver transplant operation and this would necessitate the cancellation of six cancer operations already scheduled to be conducted on the following day. At the same time, PWH learnt that another patient in the Queen Mary Hospital (QMH) was in urgent need of a liver transplant. Having balanced the need for operation services of patients from other medical specialties, PWH decided not to allow the unscheduled liver transplant operation to proceed, and that the liver should be harvested by QMH instead. In coming to this decision, PWH had explained in detail to the patient concerned the reasons for not proceeding with the operation. HA concurred with PWH that the decision not to proceed with the unscheduled liver transplant operation was made in the best interest of patients overall.

(b) In 2002, QMH conducted 60 liver transplant operations and PWH, 15 operations. The average waiting time for liver transplant was 16 months for QMH and 13 months for PWH. At present, there are 75 patients on the waiting lists for liver transplant.

(c) HA has set up an independent team comprising a senior consultant surgeon and executives from the HA Head Office to establish a central registry for liver transplant by merging the two existing waiting lists separately maintained by QMH and PWH. A single set of criteria for entering patients into the waiting list for liver transplant and according priority for receiving liver transplant operation has been established by reference to international practices. The team is in the process of reviewing the clinical data of the patients concerned with a view to coming up with a merged list.

End/Wednesday, February 26, 2002
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