Hong Kong mum could have survived if she got another liver, son tells inquest
Inquest hears of heartache post-operation meeting with surgeon 48 hours after his mother passed away
Just 48 hours after she died from complications following a liver transplant operation, a grieving son was told his mother could have survived if she had been given a different organ, an inquest heard on Tuesday.
Lo Ching-lan, 57, died at Queen Mary Hospital, Pok Fu Lam, in 2013 and at a meeting with the chief surgeon Dr William Sharr Wei just after she died, her son, Lam Kin-hung said he was told that “had two livers been swapped,” his mother might have survived.
Sharr did not elaborate, Lam said.
The son interpreted the surgeon as saying his mother should have taken the liver transplanted into another patient, rather than the one put into Lo’s body, he told the inquest.
Lam said he was told by doctors after the operation that the liver his mother received was “too big” for her “thin blood vessels”, the inquest heard.
Whether the size of the transplanted liver affected the chance of Lo’s survival was one of the matters Lam wanted the inquest to clarify.
He also wanted to know whether his mother had been looked after properly during the operation.
