According to Kyoto University Hospital, the woman underwent an 11-hour medical operation on Wednesday by a medical team of thirty men to transplant lung tissue from her husband and son.
But Kyoto Hospital said this case is the first in which lung tissue from living donors has been transplanted to a Covid-19 patient.
Dr. Hiroshi Date, a breast surgeon at the hospital that led the operation, said it gives hope to patients suffering from severe lung damage caused by Covid-19.
“We have shown that we now have an option for lung transplants (from living donors),” he said at a Thursday news conference.
The patient, who has just been identified as a woman from the western Kansai region of Japan, contracted Covid-19 late last year and spent months on a life-supporting machine that worked as an artificial lung, according to Kyoto University Hospital.
Covid-19 caused so much damage to her lungs that they were no longer functional, and that she had to get a lung transplant to survive.
The woman’s husband and son offered to donate parts of their lungs. Transplantation of brain-dead donors is still rare in Japan, and living donors are considered a better option, according to the hospital’s statement.
The husband and son are in a stable condition and the wife remains in intensive care. According to the hospital, she is expected to be able to leave the hospital within two months.