Cross-Strait medical team cares for Xinjiang kids

A team of doctors from Taiwan recently joined their mainland counterparts in providing charitable medical treatment in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, bringing high-quality healthcare to local people while exchanging expertise on the treatment of pediatric bladder stones.

From Aug 3 to 9, the 15 doctors from major hospitals across Taiwan, together with doctors from the mainland, traveled to Kashgar prefecture for surgical training and academic exchanges.

The Taiwan delegation included both senior specialists and young medical professionals in the field. As cases of bladder stones among infants are relatively limited in Taiwan, the doctors said the mainland offers opportunities to treat more patients and gain practical experience.

Lin, a Taiwan doctor who asked to be identified by his surname, said he valued the opportunity to learn surgical techniques from mainland experts, who have extensive experience treating such cases.

"Although I also treat infants with bladder stones in Taiwan, I wanted to take this opportunity to learn because the mainland has a larger number of cases," Lin said. He has performed 18 surgeries for children with bladder stones so far, while a mainland doctor can perform around a dozen such procedures in a single week, he added.

Huang, another Taiwan doctor who asked to be identified by his surname, said he wanted to learn how bladder stones are treated in patients under 14 because the condition is more common among children in the region.

After observing the procedures, Huang said he was impressed by the advanced surgical techniques and medical equipment used by mainland doctors, adding that they had reached a level that Taiwan has yet to achieve.

"What we learned here could provide inspiration for further research and the development of treatment methods and medical equipment in Taiwan," Huang said.

Xu Kewei, vice-president of Southern Medical University and chairman of the Guangdong Taiwan Compatriots Association, initiated this charity medical project in 2018 that organized medical teams from Guangdong province to treat children with bladder stones in Xinjiang.

The "stone babies" charity project was launched to address the high incidence of pediatric bladder stones in the area, a condition linked to factors including dietary habits, Xu said.

Since its launch, the project team has made 45 trips to the region, provided free screenings for more than 8,000 children and performed minimally invasive or non-invasive surgeries on more than 300 children from low-income families. The team has also helped train local medical professionals and improve the region's capacity to diagnose and treat pediatric bladder stones.

When the project was launched, around three to five out of every 100 children in some areas of southern Xinjiang were found to have bladder stones. After years of efforts, the latest epidemiological survey showed that the incidence of bladder stones among children aged 0 to 6 — the age group previously most affected — has declined significantly.

Jasur Batur, a local doctor in Xinjiang, said the charity project had enabled him to improve his surgical techniques and helped raise the standard of medical care in the region.

For young children with bladder stones, retrograde surgery can present significant anatomical challenges. To reduce trauma, doctors often opt for percutaneous nephrolithotomy, Xu explained.

"The procedure is similar to making a tiny puncture in the lower back. A nephroscope is then inserted to locate the stones, which are subsequently broken up using a laser. By thoroughly fragmenting the stones, they can be naturally passed out of the urinary tract," he said.

Xu said doctors from both sides of the Taiwan Strait could combine their strengths to develop a more comprehensive and widely applicable system for diagnosing and treating pediatric bladder stones.

"Taiwan doctors have advantages in refined patient management and human-centered care, while mainland doctors have demonstrated strengths in complex, high-difficulty surgeries and the accumulation of large-scale medical data," he said.