Established in 1928, this hospital has 465 experts with associate senior titles or above and 509 medical professionals with master’s or doctoral degrees. Among them, over 60 serve as master’s or doctoral advisors. The hospital has 2,500 beds.¹⁹⁰

The Organ Transplant Research Institute at Xiamen University was approved by the Ministry of Health to perform heart transplants. It was also the first hospital in the city to perform liver and kidney transplants.

The Organ Transplant Research Institute in 2007. Targeting practical issues in clinical organ transplantation, the institute leads this field in China.¹⁹¹

The head of its Organ Transplant Research Institute and president of Medical College of Xiamen University Qi Zhongquan is a world-famous organ transplant expert. He and Professor Henrik Ekberg from Sweden co-edited The Practical Protocol for Living donor kidney transplantation (Chinese and English version), which was highly appraised by The Transplantation Society (TTS) and published globally as an industry standard.¹⁹² He has participated in more than 500 transplant surgeries, including more than 100 living-donor kidney transplants and more than 50 islet cell transplants.¹⁹³

The hospital’s Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery was established in 1995 and currently has 9 members with senior professional titles, 7 with intermediate professional titles, 2 postdoctoral fellows, 10 doctorates, and 6 master’s degree holders. Deputy Director Yin Zhenyu studied under the well-known surgeon Professor Li Jieshou and trained at the University of Pittsburgh Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute and Cleveland Clinic’s transplant center.¹⁹⁴

The hospital’s personnel and speed of development reflects its strong clinical and academic skill. Because most of its transplant-related information have been deleted, we do not know the scale of its transplant operation. However, a fee schedule for medical services on its website indicates that the hospital performs nearly all types of transplants. Below is a portion of the fee schedule:¹⁹⁵

• Bone marrow transplant: 3,500 RMB
• Corneal transplant: 1,500 RMB
• Heart transplant (not including donor): 20,000 RMB
• Lung transplant (not including donor or organ extraction, preservation, and transportation): 10,000 RMB
• Heart-lung transplant (not including donor): 20,000 RMB
• Allogeneic spleen transplant (not including donor): 3,200 RMB
• Small intestine transplant (not including donor): 20,000 RMB
• Liver transplant (not including donor): 30,000 RMB
• Combined organ transplant: no price listed
• Allogeneic donor liver excision: 2,300 RMB
• Allogeneic donor pancreas excision: 2,300 RMB
• Pancreas transplant (not including donor): 15,000 RMB
• Allogeneic kidney transplant (not including donor or donor organ excision): 3,000 RMB

The hospital’s heart center was established in 2001 and began to operate independently on April 28, 2011.¹⁹⁶ In 2014, it became the Xiamen Cardiovascular Hospital. Its new site has 600 beds. Many of its medical professionals have received training and conducted research in other countries. More than 90% of its physicians hold master’s degrees or above. More than 50% of its nurses hold bachelor’s degrees.¹⁹⁷

Liao Chongxian, former director of the heart center’s cardiovascular surgery department and leader of the academic discipline, is one of the best-known heart transplant experts in China. He has been named “China’s top person in heart transplantation.”¹⁹⁸ On August 21, 1995, he performed the first heart transplant in Fujian Province and the first pediatric heart transplant and first heart-kidney transplant in China.

Based on his experience in the United States, Liao created the “mobile heart transplant hospital” model and travelled around the country to instruct and personally participate in heart transplants. He toured places including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing, Yantai, Wuxi, Wuhan, Lanzhou, Xining, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Taiyuan, Shijiazhuang, Weihai, and Shenyang.¹⁹⁹

In 2001, he established the Xiamen Heart Center Cardiovascular Surgery Department at Zhongshan Hospital and started his mobile heart transplant hospital model.²⁰⁰

Its website says that the department performs heart transplants on a large scale and has helped more than 20 Class 3 Grade A hospitals to perform heart transplants in the past 10 years, including Jiangsu Province Hospital, the Third Xiangya Hospital in Hunan Province, the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University, and the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University.

Liao revealed to the media that as of August 2008, China had about 600 heart transplant recipients in total, ²⁰¹ including more than 150 who had received their transplants from this hospital.²⁰²

The hospital’s hepatobiliary surgery department is the largest hepatopancreatobiliary surgery center in the province. It had 72 beds by 2006. The hospital appointed Li Jieshou from the PLA General Surgery Research Institute as chief scientist and has great technical strength. The department was one of the earliest in Xiamen to conduct allogeneic liver transplants. It has the longest survival time for liver transplants in the Xiamen region.²⁰³

The department’s director Yin Zhenyu studied under Li Jieshou; he studied as a senior visiting scholar at the University of Pittsburgh Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. In 2006, he conducted post-graduate research in transplant immunology and received clinical training at Cleveland Clinic. His mentor was Professor John J. Fung, an internationally renowned transplant immunologist. He participated in Asia’s first small intestine transplant in 1994 and first combined liver-intestine transplant in 2003.²⁰⁴

He has systematically mastered multiple transplant procedures, anti-rejection drugs and treatment, and transplant immunology. He has pioneered research in small intestine, liver-intestine, liver, and islet cell transplants.

Hospital president Wang Xiaomin is the academic leader of the hepatobiliary surgery department. His team performed Xiamen’s first liver transplant in 2002 and first transplant involving liver cancer in 2003, filling a gap in the city.