International Nephrology Congress
International Nephrology Congress
Allegheny General Hospital
USA
Professor Dai D. Nghiem was born in North Viet-Nam in 1941. He and his family escaped from the Communists
to South Viet-Nam in 1954. He attended
the French Lycee and graduated with his medical doctorate in 1970 after 4 years
of Internship from the Saigon Medical School.
His military service was cut short by a severe injury and he returned to
teach. He did a 2-year fellowship in
cardiac surgery at the University of Pittsburgh from 1972-1974 and returned to
Saigon. He and is wife emigrated as
“boat people“ to the US in 1975 to escape the communists again. He finished his US residency and took on a
2-year transplant fellowship at the Medical College of Virginia in 1978. He started his academic career at the
University of Iowa from 1980 to 1986 and moved to Pittsburgh to be Director of
the Division of Transplantation at Allegheny General Hospital. He served as a Professor of Surgery at the
Medical College of Pennsylvania/Hahnemann University and Drexel University
School of Medicine since 1997.
He is best known for his novel procedure of pancreas transplantation
with duodenum--bladder drainage which made the procedure safer for the patients
and allowed the diagnosis of rejection by the reduction in urinary amylase
levels and the cystoscopic biopsy of the duodenum
He is known for his research and clinical application of oxygen radical
scavengers such as Super Oxide Dismutase, opiate receptor blockade, Ca++
blockers Erythropoietin in the prevention of Acute Kidney Injury and the
mitigation of Delayed Graft Function.
He described the first substantial series of en-bloc transplantation of
kidneys from the very small pediatric donors.
He popularized the use of marginal donor kidneys as dual simultaneous
adult kidney transplants through a single flank incision, rather than a staged
double transplant as performed but others, thus shortening the operative time
by half and reducing the chance for complications. These innovations have provided more
transplants to many patients that might otherwise never receive the “gift of
life”.
Recently he introduced the use of tissue plasminogen activator to lyse
the microthrombin in kidneys with DIC, rendering them suitable for
transplantation.
He was involved in multiple US studies of immunosuppressive agents such
as ATG, Simulect, Mycophenolate Mofetil, Sirolimus, Alemtuzumab, and
steroid-free immune suppression protocol.
He holds membership in 23 National and International Medical
Societies. He has presented at 50
Transplant meetings in Asia, Europe and Australia, and 170 gatherings in
Northern America, chairing multiple sessions.
He has contributed 227 publications in peer-reviewed transplant journals
and 6 transplant videos to the American College of Surgeons Library. He serves as reviewer for the journal
Transplantation, the American Journal of Transplantation, the journal
Transplant International and the Journal of the American Society of Artificial
and Internal Organs.
He was recipient of multiple awards and was listed in Who’s Who in
America, Who’s Who in the World, The Guide to America’s Top Surgeons, The Pride
of the Vietnamese, The list of The Most Influential Vietnamese-Americans in
1975-2000. He was conferred the Honorary
PhD by the University of Cluj Napoca and bestowed the Honorary Citizen of the
City of Cluj Napoca, Romania in 2002.