According to CNN, the royal palace's announcement did not specify the exact time of the surgery. "Similar to all patients who have just received an organ transplant, the crown princess will remain in the hospital for the next few weeks", said Professor Are Holm of Oslo University Hospital.

Mette-Marit, 52, is married to crown prince Haakon, the heir to the Norwegian throne. She was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2018, a continuously progressing disease that causes damage and scarring to lung tissue, leading to severe respiratory failure with no definitive cure currently available.

On 5/6, Oslo University Hospital stated that crown princess Mette-Marit had been placed on the lung transplant waiting list after a severe decline in her health. "The general principle for putting a patient on the lung transplant waiting list is when the lung disease has progressed to such an extent that we have reason to believe the patient has only one year of survival prognosis", Norway's public broadcaster NRK quoted Are Holm, a lung specialist at Oslo University Hospital, as saying.

Each year, approximately 30 to 35 lung transplants are performed in Norway. A hospital representative affirmed that royal family members receive no preferential treatment in receiving donated organs. Professor Holm stated that despite the relatively short waiting list for organ transplants, patients must still meet strict screening standards for the surgery to be successful. "The donated lung must be of suitable size, blood type compatible, and we must ensure that the recipient's body has no antibodies against the tissue antigens of the transplanted organ", he said.

According to the royal palace, the crown princely couple extended their gratitude to the public for the well wishes they received recently. The next update on Mette-Marit's health status will only be released when she is officially discharged from the hospital.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit. Photo: AFP

Last December, crown prince Haakon shared that the family noticed Mette-Marit's health deteriorating as she faced increasing difficulty breathing. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere praised the crown princess's openness in proactively sharing about her illness, believing it would greatly help others in similar situations.

The surgery occurred as the Norwegian royal family faced mounting pressure from successive scandals. Earlier this week, Marius Borg Hoiby, 29, crown princess Mette-Marit's son from a previous relationship, was sentenced to 4 years in prison for rape and domestic violence after a trial that shocked the media and public opinion.

Additionally, the crown princess had to apologize to the king and queen for her past association with the late notorious American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whom she once described as a friend, before cutting ties several years before his death in 2019.

In light of these consecutive scandals, opinion poll results show that support for the monarchy in Norway has significantly declined this year. A Norstat survey conducted in February, during Hoiby's trial, recorded support for maintaining the monarchy at a record low of 60%, before a slight recovery to 64% in May.

Mette-Marit was a single mother before meeting crown prince Haakon at a music festival in 1999. She officially became crown princess two years later, following a wedding ceremony at Oslo Cathedral attended by 800 guests and millions of television viewers. This unique royal romance initially faced intense media criticism, but through their sincerity, they gradually won the affection and admiration of the majority of the Nordic nation's people.

Binh Minh (According to CNN, Reuters)