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Pioneering lung surgery saves coronavirus patient, giving hope to others

Surgeons in Chicago have given a new set of lungs to a young woman with severe damage from coronavirus.

The complex surgical procedure on the woman in her 20s was the first double-lung transplant on a COVID-19 patient in the US. A similar operation was performed on a 66-year-old woman in China in March.

The patient, who has not been identified, spent six weeks in the intensive care unit of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, where a life support machine performed the work of her heart and lungs, keeping her alive.

But by early June her lungs had become so badly damaged that a transplant was her only hope.

A coronavirus patient receives a lung transplant.
The lung transplant took 10 hours rather than the six it normally takes, partly because coronavirus had left the lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall, Source: AP via Northwestern Medicine

"Her lungs just showed no signs of recovery, in fact they had started to develop terminal fibrosis," Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program told AFP.

Fibrosis is the permanent scarring of the lung tissue, which in turn leads to destruction of the air sacs.

She had also developed large holes in her left lung, leaving it festering with a dangerous bacterial infection.

These cavities are thought to be unique to the COVID-19 illness and have left doctors mystified.

Mr Bharat, 40, has performed dozens of lung transplants, but said this operation on June 5 was "very difficult," requiring 10 hours rather than the six it normally takes.

This was partly because the virus had left her lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall.

Giving hope to patients with virus-damaged lungs

Mr Bharat added the procedure's success led him to "absolutely think and hope that we can operate on many more patients who are now stuck on the ventilator because their lungs have been permanently destroyed."

The patient remains on a ventilator while her body heals but is well enough to visit with family via phone video and doctors say her chances for a normal life are good.

A coronavirus patient receives a double-lung transplant in Chicago.
Surgeon Ankit Bharat at work. He performed a double-lung transplant for a woman with severe lung damage from the coronavirus. Source: AP

“We are anticipating that she will have a full recovery,” said Dr Rade Tomic, medical director of the hospital’s lung transplant program.

She was otherwise pretty healthy but her condition rapidly deteriorated after she was hospitalised in late April.

Doctors waited six weeks for her body to clear the virus, while mechanically supporting her body, before considering a transplant.

with AP

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