A young woman who experienced severe lung failure because of the coronavirus received a double lung transplant at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, reinstating faith in people. This is the first known lung transplant in U.S because of Covid-19.
The surgery lasted for 10 hours, which is a lot more than what the standard lung transplant operations take. The severe inflammation from the disease left the lungs “completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm.” The same was reported by Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine.
The patient is in her 20s and didn’t have history of any severe health conditions.
“She’s awake, she’s smiling, she FaceTimed with her family,” said Dr. Bharat.
But, the doctor reported that the recovery will take a lot more time. Even though the transplanted lungs are a lot healthier, she still needs to be on ventilation because of the weakened chest muscles. It will also take her a lot more time to completely regain her strength.
The transplant was a necessity for survival, Bharat said. His team also alerted the other hospitals in the vicinity stating that a transplant could effectively help severely ill Covid-19 patients.
Bharat reported that following the news went out about the transplant, several medical centres from around have been calling to get an idea on the progress of the same and if they could send in more Covid-19 patients to the Northwester Hospital for similar lung transplant.
“I want to emphasize that this is not for every COVID patient. We are talking about patients who are relatively young, very functional, with minimal to no comorbid conditions, with permanent lung damage who can’t get off the ventilator,” said Bharat.
Bharat further exclaimed that he and his team have been closely monitoring some of the Covid-19 survivors who had been on ventilators because of the severe lung damage to check whether they recovery completely or the scarring in their lungs could lead to the need of a transplant.
The patient’s name has been withheld as of now to keep their privacy protected and the family has also denied from giving any interviews. The only information available is the fact that the patient is in her 20s and lives and works in Chicago and recently relocated to North Carolina.
Bharat reported that the patient was healthy before they contracted the virus. She did have a minor illness for which she was taking some immuno-suppressive medications, which could have deteriorated the risks further.
She was reportedly ill for around two weeks before she was admitted to the hospital on April 26. She was put on ventilator immediately and the doctors were worried because her condition kept getting worse. She was even hooked to a machine that pumps in oxygen directly into the bloodstream.
This form of treatment was administered to her for weeks with no signs of improvement. The constant scarring on the lungs even affected the liver and heart functions. With the development of the situation, Bharat and his team were sure that her lungs wouldn’t recover.
“You have someone in their 20s, who’s otherwise healthy, this poor girl. The whole team felt it’s hard to let someone go like that. We wanted to give her every option. Everybody was just rooting for her,” said Bharat.
There have been previous similar cases where Bharat and his team had been sceptical whether to conduct a transplant and take a risk, leading to the young patient dying. They didn’t want a repeat of that.
Northwestern Hospital in Chicago is known for its lung transplant procedures, doing around 50 of them a year.
The patient was put on the waiting list for the lung transplant after she tested negative from the virus. The hospital found her a matching donor for the transplant following which she underwent the surgery.
Bharat said that the patient was the sickest one that he had done a lung transplant on. The condition of her lungs was the worst that he had ever seen. Even a pathologist who analysed the patient’s lungs reported that the damage caused by Covid-19 was irreversible.
Researchers are also studying this case to know more about the mechanics of the disease and how it impacts people.
The patient who is likely going to undergo such procedures have to take immune-suppressive medications to ensure that the body doesn’t reject the transplant. This can otherwise increase the risks of infection.
The patient has been time and time tested for Covid-19 during her recovery with the immune-suppressants to ensure that the same doesn’t end up risking her life. But, the test results have come out negative every time.
