▲Endowed-Chair Professor Sung-Gyu Lee receives the Order of Civil Merit, Mongnyeon Medal at the Commemoration Ceremony of the 52nd Health Day held on April 5

Endowed-Chair Professor Sung-Gyu Lee of the Division of Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery at Asan Medical Center received the Order of Civil Merit, Mongnyeon Medal, at the Commemoration Ceremony of the 52nd Health Day held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on April 5. Endowed-Chair Professor Sung-Gyu Lee, who has performed the world’s largest number of liver transplantation, was awarded the medal for leading the field of liver transplantation over the past 30 years, achieving world-class research results and contributing to the improvement of public health.

Endowed-Chair Professor Sung-Gyu Lee was the world’s first to develop modified right lobe graft in January 1999. Instead of removing the left part (left lobe) of the liver and grafting it into the patient during living donor liver transplantation, he removed the larger right part (right lobe) and created an artificial vein. This surgical technique increased the success rate of living donor liver transplantation from 70% to 95%. In March 2000, he successfully performed the world’s first 2-to-1 living donor liver transplantation, where parts of the livers from two donors were removed and transplanted into one recipient, expanding the range of liver donors and recipients. Furthermore, he also performed the most ABO-incompatible liver transplantation worldwide for an immunologically high-risk patient group, saving the lives of patients with end-stage liver disease who could not have survived with conventional approaches.