Nguyen Hoang Duy Tien, 32, a surgeon at the Trauma and Orthopedics Center of Can Tho Central General Hospital, was on a Japanese carrier’s overnight flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Tokyo on April 5 when the cabin announcement went out in English, Japanese and Vietnamese asking whether a doctor was on board. He had just finished his meal and was about to sleep, with roughly half an hour left before landing.
When Tien reached the front of the cabin, the crew had already laid the woman on her side on the floor. Her face was pale and she did not respond when called. Her husband and son, traveling with her, told Tien she had no history of diabetes, no high blood pressure, and had never fainted before.
Tien asked the cabin crew to bring the onboard blood pressure monitor. The reading came back at 70 over 40, deep into dangerous hypotensive territory.
“That is a dangerous blood pressure level,” he told Read a day later. At that range, he said, the body risks cardiac arrhythmia and a sudden drop in blood flow to the brain, heart and kidneys, which can lead to ischemic stroke or a heart attack.
With no way to diagnose the cause of the crash in blood pressure inside an aircraft cabin, Tien followed standard emergency protocol and moved to stabilize her with intravenous fluids. The crew’s onboard doctor kit contained a bag of normal saline and an IV catheter. He decided to set up the line on the spot.
The procedure was harder than it sounds. Tien specializes in orthopedic trauma surgery, and although he had inserted countless IV lines during his residency, it had been years since he last did one routinely. The cabin space was narrow, the aircraft was descending with light turbulence, and dozens of passengers were watching.
“In that moment I really was a bit worried, because this isn’t something I do every day. But in an emergency, there’s no time to hesitate,” Tien said. The needle went in cleanly on the first attempt and the saline began to flow. Tien switched to English for the rest of the response so the mixed Vietnamese-Japanese cabin crew could coordinate without confusion.
About 10 minutes later, with half the saline bag drained, the woman’s blood pressure began to climb. She regained consciousness and was able to speak. The crew measured her blood pressure every five minutes for the remainder of the flight, recording steady improvement on each reading.
When the aircraft touched down at Haneda, the captain asked passengers to stay seated while a ground emergency team of eight to 10 medical workers boarded to take over. Tien personally briefed the Japanese responders on the patient’s condition and the steps he had taken before handing her over.
He then continued on a domestic connection to Toyama, where he is now enrolled in a three-month advanced spine surgery program. He spent six months training in Yamagata Prefecture earlier in his career and has also completed courses in Switzerland and Taiwan.
Looking back, Tien called the experience unforgettable. The whole thing was over in minutes, he said, but treating an emergency patient at 10,000 meters above the ground was something he had never done before in his career, and something he had not expected to do on the way to a training course.
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