Chen Jingyu, vice director of Wuxi People's Hospital, is awarded the Chinese Physician Prize at a ceremony in celebration of China's Medical Workers' Day on Aug 19 in Beijing. [Photo/wxrb.com]
Chen Jingyu, vice director of Wuxi People's Hospital, won the Chinese Physician Prize, the highest honor for the country's medical workers, on China's Medical Workers' Day on Aug 19, becoming the first in Wuxi to receive the honor.
Over 30 winners among the 80 recipients of this year's Chinese Physician Prize battled the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, Hubei province, the city hit hardest by the virus in China. Chen was one of them. His pioneering lung transplant operation has been considered a medical marvel in treating COVID-19 patients.
On Feb 18, Chen's team successfully completed the world's first double lung transplantation for advanced COVID-19 patients with pulmonary fibrosis in Wuxi, and another case was successfully completed on March 10.
Chen's team then went to the front lines in Wuhan. On April 20 and 24, Chen's team successfully completed two lung transplants for two advanced COVID-19 patients with pulmonary fibrosis. The two patients used a ventilator and an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine for 62 and 73 days respectively, setting world records.
On July 21, 92 days after receiving the first lung transplant in Hubei, performed by Chen's team, 65-year-old patient Cui Zhiqiang, who had irreversible pulmonary fibrosis caused by COVID-19, was discharged from Wuhan University People's Hospital. Cui was the first patient to meet discharge standards among the 10 COVID-19 patients receiving lung transplants worldwide.
In the early morning of Aug 18, the day just before he received the honor, Chen was still performing a lung transplant at Wuxi People's Hospital. For many years, he has been committed to promoting lung transplantation technology across the country, bringing the "Wuxi experience" to the country without reservation with the hope that every province will have hospitals that can perform lung transplants.
