(Newer)
Surgeons in Japan say they have performed a first operation that will give hope to coronavirus patients with severe lung damage. In the world’s first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a COVID patient, a woman who spent months on a life support machine received healthy tissue transplants from her husband and her son, CNN reports. Doctors believe the woman’s lungs were no longer functional and that she needed a lung transplant to survive – but since organ donation from brain-dead patients is rare in Japan, it could take years for an organ to become available.
“I think there is a lot of hope for this treatment in the sense that it creates a new option,” said Hiroshi Date, the surgeon in charge of the operation. Kyodo News. The wife received a portion of her husband’s right lung and a portion of her son’s left lung. The man and boy, who have accepted the risk of reduced lung function, are in a stable condition and the woman is expected to leave the hospital within two months. According to doctors, the woman, whose name has not yet been released, had any conditions before a coronavirus infection ruined her lungs late last year. (In the United States, a double lung transplant last year saved the life of a COVID patient in her 20s.)