Shanghai has drawn up a new standard to enable more cancer patients to undergo transplants, according to a conference on liver diseases yesterday.
The standard, named the 'Fudan Standard', stipulates that a liver cancer patient with no more than three tumors, the diameters of which are no greater than 9 centimeters, can undergo a liver transplant. The number of patients covered will be double that covered by the existing standard, while the survival-rate under the new standard is expected to be unchanged.
Chinese liver cancer patients account for 53 percent of the world total, and of the world's 400 million hepatitis B virus carriers, 80 percent or 320 million are of Chinese origin, 150 million of them in China.