Hospital successfully operates on centenarian

Tough woman: Hee Lian resting at the nursing home in Kuantan. — Bernama

KUANTAN: The Tengku Ampuan Afzan Hospital here has successfully operated on a centenarian, probably the first in Pahang or even the country.

Orthopaedic surgeon Dr V.A. Jacob Abraham performed the surgery on Nov 14 last year by inserting a plate in the right thigh of a 104-year-old woman, who had suffered a femur fracture.

The centenarian fractured the right thigh bone in a fall near her son’s house and was admitted to the hospital on Nov 6.

Hee Lian, who was born on Aug 11, 1910, was discharged on Nov 21 following the operation, deemed the first-ever bold attempt by a government hospital on an elderly patient.

Hospital director Datuk Dr Marlia Mohamed Salleh said Hee Lian was the oldest patient of the hospital to undergo such a successful operation and, possibly, could be the oldest patient in the country as well.

She described the work of the surgical team led by Dr Jacob as a record for the hospital, and said it was a team effort by the surgeon, anaesthetist Dr Hafizah Mohamed, nurses and those involved in post-care treatment and rehabilitation.

The two-hour procedure was a minimal invasive percutaneous plating, she said, adding that the patient had a similar fracture on the same leg 10 years ago which required a dynamic hip screw procedure.

Dr Marlia said Hee Lian was able to go through the procedure with ease as she had no medical complications and did not suffer from hypertension or diabetes.

“She was stable throughout the procedure and after the operation she recuperated well without any infection on the wound,” she said yesterday.

Hee Lian’s son, carpenter Lai Kau Chai, 62, said his mother was wheelchair-bound after the first operation 10 years ago.

However, he said she was healthy and had no major illness.

“After she was discharged, we had to make her stay in a nursing home here as they have people who could take good care of her,” he said.

Hee Lian has seven children, two of them daughters, aged 60 to 82. Her husband, a tin mine worker in Kampung Sungai Lembing, died in 1970 at the age of 60.

Lai said his mother was a housewife but as a young woman she used to tend to her vegetable farm and rear poultry in her hometown in Kampung Sungai Lembing.

He thanked the hospital for a job well done.

“Dr Jacob is good and a nice man. I really appreciate what he has done,” he said. — Bernama