Changa biography

Viktor Chang: The story of a thousand saved lives and ... one murder of Yam Him Chang English. Due to the difficult military atmosphere and aggression of the Japanese army in Shanghai, the Chang family was forced to flee first from his hometown, and then from the country, having lost all property, and until the end of World War II live in Burma with Rodney, trying to perceive another culture and language.

After the surrender of Japan, Victor, his parents and the little sister Francis return to Hong Kong, but they are waiting for another misfortune there: May Chang - the mother of Victor - diagnose breast cancer at a late stage. The slow and painful death of the mother, which was only 33 years old, was the most significant event in the youth of Viktor Chang, eclipsing the refugee and deprivation of the war.

All this will subsequently play an important role in his career, but the decision to go to medicine, Victor Chang made it even then, at the age of 12, caring for his mother. In the year, the Korean war is flared up in southern China, and Victor’s father, Aubrey Chang, decides to send children away from the next military conflict, to Australia to his older brother.

Brother Obrei Chang was able to arrange Victor in the high school of Christian Brothers in Luisema, but Francis soon returned back to her father, unable to withstand sharp changes. Victor stubbornly went to his goal in the conditions that he provided his life: he entered the medical faculty of the University of Sydney and graduated from him in the year with a bachelor's degree of medicine and surgery, after which the head of his internship at the Holy Vincent Hospital sent Victor to London to study by the British surgeon Obri York Mason.

So in the year, Chang became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and began to study cardioral surgery in the royal hospital of Brompton. Meanwhile, a grandiose event for medicine and the whole world occurred in Cape Town: the South African cardiac surgeon Christian Barnard conducts the first transplantation of the heart from a person to a person - summer Louis Vashkanski, who, according to the doctors, had several weeks to live.

The success of Barnard broke into all the headlines of the world media, where experts fantasized about the future of medicine, wondered that this did not happen in the USA, but in South Africa and, of course, criticized the ethical side of the operation. The transplantation took place on the night of December 3, and a few hours before, Vashkanski’s wife, saddened by her husband’s fate, returned from the hospital after meeting with him, and at that moment an accident occurred in her eyes.

Mother Denise died on the spot, and the girl guided signs of life. She was immediately taken to the hospital and connected to the artificial life support system, but the head injury was not compatible with life. After the success of the transplantation, about which the whole world found out, Barnard began to arrive angry letters that he probably decided to play God. The public was outraged, but colleagues admired the new possibilities of transplantology.

Less than a year later - in October of the year - Harry Windsor, under whose leadership, Viktor Chang studied, conducted the first heart transplant operation in the Holy Vincent Hospital in Sydney, the patient was the summer painter Richard Pai. He pronounced his first words to doctors and nurses three days after the nine -hour operation and since then he constantly joked and talked with everyone who surrounded him.

Pie told something to the nurses when he suddenly died in the middle of the sentence, being under observation in the hospital of St. Vincent. The transplantation carried out by Harry Windsor after the world breakthrough Christian Barnard was technically successfully, but the patient eventually lived only 45 days, having died due to the lack of adequate immunosuppression methods and, as a result of developing infection.

After 6 years, Harry Windsor made another attempt. The patient died after 62 days, and this failure forced the authorities to suspend the program of heart transplant. Concerned to the lack of transplantation and the general lack of donor organs, Chang led the collection of the teams of scientists, engineers to develop an artificial heart and the production of inexpensive heart valves, which could not be canceled, then delay the need for a transplant.

Together with Tameru, they created enterprises to develop mechanical and fabric valves of the heart, called the heart valves of St. Vincent-in Guangzhou and Sydney, providing them with the entire Asia-Pacific region. The approval of the FDA cyclosporin and in the year made a transplant of the heart more feasible, and the inspired Chang organized a fundraiser for creating a program for transplanting the heart in the Holy Vincent Hospital.

However, it took several years to make the Australian government to resume the program and create a national heart transplant branch by appointing Viktor Chang by that time the already famous cardiosurgeon of Australia and China as the director of the program. In the year, ten years after the last heart transplantation at the Sydney Hospital of St. Vincent, Viktor Chang held the first truly successful heart transplant in Australia.The first recipient of the heart in the framework of the new program led by Chang was the summer Peter Eptorp, and after 5 weeks another transplanted heart beat - in the chest of the summer Fiona Kut.

If I smile and give a positive answer, he will continue his way. I know if I hadn’t done this, he would go to see what the problem is. Perhaps he would have stayed for only a few minutes, but would pay attention to me and listen to my fears. Two years later, when Fiona's new heart began to refuse, she underwent a second surgery to transplant heart in the hospital of St.

Vincent, also under the leadership of Chang, who remained in the know of the girl’s fate until his death. Today, Fiona Kut is the most long -lived recipient of heart transplant in Australia. In the same year, Viktor Chang founded the fund for the provision of funds in two areas with which he was passionate: education and innovation in cardio -regional surgery. He devoted a lot of effort and time to the training of specialists in China, believing that all knowledge should be common for medicine to develop, and people - to receive qualified assistance in any corner of the world.

He made sure that all aspects of their life in an unfamiliar country were taken into account. Based on the migrant’s own experience, dad sympathized with the difficulties that people face, leaving his homeland, often without a family. Its goal was to create a favorable environment, making their transition as comfortable as possible. He saved hundreds of lives thanks to the transplantation of organs, and the research of the center he opened was saved by thousands.

Up to a year, Chang continued to search for alternatives to transplantation of donor organs and was extremely interested in the development of an artificial heart, which were held in the USA and the USSR. Also, according to his son, he was very waiting for the results of Cardiowest clinical trials in the year.

However ... In early July, two Malaysians, Chun Lew and Chun Lim, found a magazine that talked about Asians who achieved success in Australia. Their choice randomly fell on Victor Chang. On the morning of July 4, they crashed into their Toyota into the Chang’s car, forcing him to go to the side of the road, and after a quarrel with a surgeon who refused to give them money, Lew fired deadlines.

The first one hit the right cheek, the second, deadly, released point blank, hit the right temple and passed through the brain. Chang died on the spot. Lew and Lim ran away, throwing the body of a doctor near the road, but one of them lost his wallet at the crime scene, which helped the Australian police determine the criminals and detain them. Both of the Malaysians were convicted of 25 years, but in the year they went out at the parole, despite the protests of the public.

The Viktor Chang Foundation also continues its work to this day and is the only Australian non -profit organization that provides grants for the exchange of skills and innovations between Australia and Asia in the field of cardio -regional surgery and cardiology. Today, every tenth patient has a new heart, but people are dying while waiting for a transplant, and every day we come here and try to solve this problem, the executive director of the Viktor Chang, Professor Bob Gram, the executive director of the Viktor Chang Cardiological Research.

Victor Chang Foundation ABOUT DR Victor Chang Veronika Sokovnina Medical journalist, editor-in-chief Rustransplant, creator of the Project on Luggage Transplantation "Light Blog about the Great Case", specialist of the Department of Socio-Assigning Projects "Scientific Research Institute of Healthcare and Medical Service and Medical Management DZM "did you like the article?