Surgeons in Chicago have given a new set of lungs to a young woman with severe lung damage from the coronavirus.
Only a few other COVID-19 survivors, in China and Europe, have received lung transplants.
The patient, who is her 20s, was on a ventilator and heart-lung machine for almost two months before her operation last Friday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
The 10-hour procedure was challenging because the virus had left her lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall, Dr. Ankit Bharat, who performed the operation, said Wednesday.
Doctors have kept her on both machines while her body heals but say her chances for a normal life are good.
“We are anticipating that she will have a full recovery,” said Dr. Rade Tomic, medical director of the hospital’s lung transplant program.
The patient was not identified but Bharat said she had recently moved to Chicago from North Carolina to be with her boyfriend.
She was otherwise pretty healthy but her condition rapidly deteriorated after she was hospitalized in late April. Doctors waited six weeks for her body to clear the virus before considering a transplant.
Lungs accounted for just 7% of the nearly 40,000 U.S. organ transplants last year. They are typically hard to find and patients often wait weeks on the transplant list.
The Chicago patient was in bad shape, with signs that her heart, kidneys and liver were beginning to fail, so she quickly moved up in line, Bharat said.
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Follow Lindsey Tanner on Twitter: @LindseyTanner
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Just wondering how many people end up needing a double lung transplant after a severe bout of seasonal flu?
there are a lot of others out there who needed a transplant, but didn’t receive one because “it’s just a virus, it will go away in the summer”.
The secondary results of this virus are just starting to trickle in:
‘you’re lucky to survive the virus, but you will need dialysis for the rest of your life’
‘too bad about your liver, but you did survive the virus’
‘I’m sorry, but we’ll have to feed and wash you for the rest of your life on account of the stroke from the virus’
‘that was some virus. you’ll need a transplant as soon as one becomes available’
Some perspective/notes on lung transplantation. Please don’t think this is a magical fix.
My wife is a two-time double-lung transplant recipient. She’s been breathing with someone else’s lungs for 11.5 years. First was 2008. Second was 2016. She was born with Cystic Fibrosis. The first transplant was on her 34th birthday.
Median survival for the first double-lung transplant is 5 years. Bronchiolitis Obliterans (sometimes called “popcorn lung”) due to rejection is what caused her first lungs to rapidly fail after 7 years, so she went back on The List. She was perfectly healthy…except she couldn’t get enough air. This is common with lungs, they wear out quickly and there’s always issues with rejection/infection. Why? If you think about it a second, the lungs are the only internal organ that are regularly in contact with the world around you as you breathe.
There’s actually no real statistics on survival rates for the second transplant. Why? Because that doesn’t happen very often - in 2016, only 5% of patients at my wife’s hospital were re-transplants, and she was the only one that year or the next.
So basically we won the organ lottery twice (and then got a lot of bills out of it
) . Our donors (and their families) gave my wife More Time to see both our kids graduate high school and one finish college so far. We traded one set of problems for another (I think my wife is up to 35 different medications on various schedules, and the CF is still there) but she can breathe.
Breathing Is Fundamental.
Right now my wife is seeing rejection issues again and is on oxygen at home (her 60 lbs. home oxygen machine is nicknamed “Vader”). We had a two-week hospitalization back in late-March/early-April. The first two days were a little terrifying because she came in with a high fever and cough and they had to triage her as a potential COVID patient (passing two rounds of PCR tests) before they could let her move to the usual transplant floor. Thankfully she was clear except for the rejection and infections that brought her in (isn’t it weird to be thankful for being sick with something you know about?).
There is only one place in the US that will do a 3rd transplant (Duke). They just did their 6th ever last month (and COVID made finding donor organs very difficult for that patient). That makes 13 triples in the entire world. No idea if we will get to that point. It keeps me up at night sometimes.
I will ask, if you aren’t an organ donor, please go sign up. https://registerme.org/ will send your info to your state registry. Even if you checked the box at the DMV, you might want to check in with your state registry and make sure your profile is correct (Texas doesn’t do well with address changes, etc.). Then make sure and tell your family and friends that you are a donor. If the time comes where you could help save someone else, you won’t be there to pass on your wishes.
This woman in Chicago is about to have a radical change in her quality of life, especially since she started from a coma and being on a respirator. I desperately hope everything goes perfectly. I’m also thankful for her donor and their family for this chance. I hope our various medical folks can come up with other/better treatment options or a vaccine, because this pandemic has us staying at home for the long-term right now.
OK, sorry, that got long. This is one of my mental soap-boxes.
Thank you for this. My heart - and any prayers I have - go out to you both. And the young Chicago woman.
I am checking my donor status today.
My congratulations to you and your wife for the hard journey that you have had. My role in the infectious diseases dept. was heart/ lung transplants until everyone got pulled off to do drug studies for aids. I know a lot of improvements have happened since I was there, but sometimes it feels like the fight has just begun and you fight every single minute of every day. Stay safe, stay strong.