People’s Hospital serves as a clinical training base for graduate students from the Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and Zhongshan School of Medicine of Sun Yat-sen University. It has 409 senior staff, including 49 PhDs and 308 with master’s degrees. It has 1,500 beds.⁷⁰²

The hospital established its organ transplant center in 2001 and began performing heart, liver, autologous stem cell, xenogeneic islet cell, corneal, and other types of transplants. Its transplant skill is at the forefront in Guangdong Province. The hospital began kidney transplantation in 1993, which has now become a routine procedure at the hospital. In 2006, it performed the first combined heart-kidney transplant in Guangdong Province, the fourth such surgery in China. In May 2009, it began to conduct combined liver-kidney transplants.⁷⁰³

The hospital was one of the earliest units in Guangdong Province to begin conducting organ transplants. It currently performs heart, lung, liver, autologous stem cell, islet cell, and corneal transplants. It began carrying out kidney transplants in the early 1990s, established an organ transplant center in 2001, performed its first liver transplant in the same year, and carried out its first heart transplant in 2004. In 2006, its transplant center was designated a Zhongshan City key medical specialty. It performed its first combined heart-kidney transplant in 2006, its first combined liver-kidney transplant in 2009, and its first bilateral lung transplant in 2015.⁷⁰⁴

The hospital has achieved comprehensive development and Ministry of Health approval in heart, liver, and kidney transplantation. The transplant center built dedicated laminar flow operating rooms and monitored wards. The center has a 20-room isolation ward and laboratories for tissue matching and transplant pathology. It employs a large group of medical experts experienced in transplantation and performs difficult liver-kidney, pediatric split liver, and liver re-

transplants. Its basic research in liver transplantation and related fields leads Guangdong Province.⁷⁰⁵ On March 13, 2014, the hospital performed a simultaneous heart, liver, and kidney transplant for one patient.⁷⁰⁶

The center performs orthotopic and living-donor liver transplants. It is one of the few units around the Pearl River Delta to perform liver transplants at scale. Since 2000, its research projects in liver transplantation have won first, second, and third prizes of the Zhongshan City Science and Technology Progress Award.⁷⁰⁷ The Zhongshan Medical Association relied upon the hospital’s strength in transplantation to establish its Organ Transplant Professional Committee in 2013.⁷⁰⁸

The hospital began developing allogeneic kidney transplants in 1993 and achieved certification in Guangdong Province in 2004. The kidney transplant department has 10 dedicated isolation rooms and a transplantation-experienced team, whose surgeons all have intermediate titles or above and at least master’s degrees. The team is capable of conducting complicated kidney transplants. It began performing living-donor kidney transplants in 2002 and conducted the first combined heart-kidney transplant in Guangdong Province in January 2006 and the hospital’s first combined liver-kidney transplant in May 2009. It now performs kidney transplants as a routine procedure and at an expanding scale.⁷⁰⁹

The hospital’s ophthalmology center has the strongest ability, highest surgery volume, and highest comprehensive skill among eye centers in the city of Zhongshan. It is also relatively influential in Guangdong Province. The center is subordinate to the ocular surface disease and corneal transplant specialty. It has matured in corneal transplantation and performed the hospital’s first corneal transplant surgery. It conducts penetrating keratoplasty, deep lamellar keratoplasty, limbal stem cell transplants, total corneal transplants, and other types of corneal transplants.⁷¹⁰