This is a provincial regional medical center and has over 800 senior technical personnel and over 1,500 staff with doctoral and graduate degrees. It has 3,200 beds.⁹⁰⁷

In August 2003, the hospital successfully carried out Liaocheng City’s first liver transplant. It has since begun carrying out routine allogeneic orthotopic liver transplants. Its Hepatobiliary Surgery Department currently has one chief surgeon, 3 associate chief surgeons, 1 PhD, 3 PhD students, and 3 members with master’s degrees. It has 43 beds.⁹⁰⁸

In 2003, the hospital’s cardiac surgery department was the first among municipal-level hospitals in Shandong Province to develop heart transplant surgery, and successfully carried out 4 heart transplants consecutively. In 2004, it performed China’s first single-lung transplant.⁹⁰⁹ In October 2005, it carried out three transplants–heart, liver, and kidney–all in one day.⁹¹⁰

Ma Zengshan, the director of the cardiac surgery department, performed the region’s first heart transplant on May 23, 2003, the first allogeneic right lung transplant, and China’s first single-lung transplant combined with an atrial septal defect repair. He studied at heart centers in Lyon, Berlin, Humboldt University, Toronto, Minnesota, and other places.⁹¹¹

In the 20 days between January 18 and February 8, 2007, the hospital performed 6 transplants, including 2 orthotopic heart allografts, 3 liver allografts, and one kidney transplant.⁹¹²
On April 10, 2008, head nurse Zhang Chunyan shared on the hospital’s website, “Our cardiac surgery department’s nurses, while performing our duties during routine heart surgeries, are also responsible for postoperative care for heart, liver, kidney, and lung transplants.” “During transplants, because of special aspects of the donor organs, we often need to do heart, liver, and kidney transplants simultaneously. This increased our workload more than ten-fold. Every person is overloaded with work every day and put in multiple times the effort.” This indicates that the department extracts the heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, and other organs at the same time from one donor. Multiple transplant surgeries involving multiple types of organs are performed.

She included one example: “In October 2005, we performed heart, liver, and kidney transplants in one day. This was a major test for us.” The team first carried out the heart transplant, followed by kidney and then liver.

She revealed, “In over a month [October 2005], we did postoperative work for 3 heart, 5 liver, and 6 kidney transplants.”⁹¹³

Based on the above, the hospital has performed 6 known heart transplants: the first one on May 23, 2003, three in October 2005, and one between January 18 and February 8, 2007. However, the hospital’s website claims that it has performed only 4 heart transplants.⁹¹⁴ We find that the figure from the media report and Zhang Chunyan has already exceeded the website’s number by 50%.