For many years, Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh, Deputy Director of the Da Nang Hospital, has been passionate about applying the findings of his research to benefit patients, thereby increasing treatment effectiveness, reducing costs, and giving hope to many patients in difficult circumstances.

Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh. Photo: XUAN HAU

A doctor is wholeheartedly for patients

“Doctor Xuan Anh gives me a new life. I will never forget this kindness all my life". That was the emotional confession of Mrs. Ngo Thi Tai, 69, residing in Ly Son Island District, Quang Ngai Province when talking about Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh.

After more than one month of treatment at the Da Nang Hospital, Mrs. Ngo Thi Tai will be discharged in the next few days. Her eyes shone in the joy when being informed by Dr. Anh.

Due to her difficult circumstance, Mrs. Tai has little opportunity to visit hospital for periodic medical checkups. More than 3 years ago, she was diagnosed with a rare disease in her right leg and was advised to be hospitalised for leg amputation in order to prevent the infection from spreading. Even though she suffered a lot of pain and torment, she still gave up because the cost of treatment was beyond her family's ability.

Luckily, during his volunteer trip on the Ly Son Island, Dr. Anh met Mrs. Tai and  mobilised charity organisations to provide financial support and bring her to the Da Nang Hospital for prompt treatment.

“Meeting Dr. Xuan Anh gives me a new life. I really don't know how to repay the kindness of doctors of the Da Nang Hospital, especially Dr. Xuan Anh" she said.

After a period of intensive treatment, with the cooperation of sponsors and the dedication of the medical team, the female patient not only had her disease cured but also did not have her right leg amputated as initial diagnosis.

Mrs. Tai is one of many lucky patients who have the opportunity to be treated by Dr. Xuan Anh. For more than 30 years of working, Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh and his colleagues have always provided timely help to many patients in difficult circumstances. Every year, Dr. Xuan Anh conducts many volunteer trips to give free medical examinations and treatment to patients in remote and border areas, and islands, with the hope that all people have access to the best healthcare.

Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh giving a medical checkup to Mrs. Ngo Thi Tai

A doctor with many medical innovations

For many years, Dr. Pham Tran Xuan Anh and doctors at the Da Nang Hospital have proposed many practical scientific solutions and initiatives for the hospital and the city's healthcare sector.

With his great passion for scientific research, Dr. Xuan Anh and his colleagues have had 18 scientific research projects accepted at the grassroots level and reported at domestic and international scientific conferences since 2003. Research projects have contributed to increasing treatment success rates and reducing costs, hereby bringing hope to many patients.

Most recently, Dr. Xuan Anh and his team of colleagues have received a Creative Labour Certificate from the Executive Committee of the Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour for their research on improving the Nuss technique to treat congenital pectus excavatum.

According to Dr. Anh, congenital pectus excavatum is not a rare disease. Every year, at the hospital’s Department of Thoracic Surgery, about 45 cases of congenital pectus excavatum surgery are performed.

Currently, the Nuss procedure is a minimally invasive repair used to treat pectus excavatum.

However, since its inception, this method has had many limitations. By fixing the bar with steel threads after a while, the thin steel thread may break. For a piece of broken thread located in the chest, the thread can fall off, float freely and can pierce the lung parenchyma. Broken pieces of suture outside the chest will cause bar displacement, reducing the effectiveness of the surgery. This is a vital factor that determines the success of congenital concave breast augmentation surgery.

From that reality, Dr. Xuan Anh's group researched and proposed many improvements to the Nuss method.

Accordingly, the doctors will replace the old surgical technique with a new one to lift the concave chest with two parallel bars, connecting the two bars with two Kirschner nails, not fixing the two ends of the bar to the ribs below, keeping the two bars together. The steel thread is fixed at the position where the rod enters the right pleural cavity.

This method aims to improve treatment effectiveness, overcome complications of bar displacement, eliminate broken steel threads at the tip of the bar, thereby eliminating the situation of remaining steel threads after surgery and reducing post-operative pain.

Patients can get up and walk sooner, the average length of hospital stay is shorter than with the old method and the cost that patients have to pay for surgery is also reduced.

Specifically, patients have to pay only VND95,000 for using a Kirschner nail, while the cost for the old method ranges between VND450,000 and VND900,000. This will help reduce the financial burden of patients and family members, and save travel costs in case of having to be hospitalised for surgery due to complications caused by missing steel threads.

Dr. Xuan Anh emphasised he will always do his best to find better methods to benefit patients and meet the expectations of their relatives.

Reporting by XUAN HAU - Translating by M.DUNG