A foreign software engineer working in Guangzhou, who suffered infective endocarditis and consequent failure of the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver and brain, has recovered after treatment at a hospital in the city.

Doctors from more than a dozen departments, including cardiac surgery, nephrology and extracorporeal circulation, as well as the cardiac care unit, worked closely to save the patient, thanks to the hospital's multi-disciplinary team mechanism, said Wu Zhongkai, head of the Cardiac Surgery Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, at a press briefing on Monday.

Michael Horvath, 41, went to the hospital's emergency department with a high fever and breathing difficulty on the night of April 5 and his situation deteriorated very quickly.

He received cardiac surgery on April 12, right after imagery provided vague evidence of infective endocarditis.

Life support facilities, such as intra-aortic balloon pump and continuous renal replacement therapy were used in the treatment and his rare Rh negative blood type was supplied by the city's blood center.

"When I came to the hospital, it was really bad. I could hardly breathe. They had to force air into my lungs. That's the last thing I remember," Horvath said.

"The next thing I remembered was that several days after the surgery, when they woke me up, my breathing was very bad; they had to give me extra oxygen.

"My breathing is coming back. I can take a nice, full, deep breath right now. I could not walk after the surgery because I had been in bed for so long. Now I can walk far. My heart rate was very fast and it has come down. "

"I feel good now. Going back to normal. Still recovering. ...I want to thank them. They did a good job. I almost died. I'm very happy that they made the right decisions. ...The doctors here had a plan and the plan worked."

Horvath, who is to be discharged from the hospital Tuesday, now is looking forward to the birth of his baby, due to be born in about a month.