Surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago performed a successful lung transplant on a patient who was hospitalized with severe symptoms of COVID-19. The twenty-something-year-old woman had damaged lungs, and the transplant was the only solution.
- The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit due to severe COVID-19 symptoms
- Her lungs were irreversibly damaged in a short time, and the only salvation was a transplant of this organ. Unfortunately, for it to happen, first the patient’s body had to get rid of the virus
- After a ten-hour lung transplant operation, the young woman recovers. This is not the first time a theoretically non-at-risk person has developed such severe COVID-19 symptoms
Lung transplant in a young woman with COVID-19
A Spaniard in her early 19s had arrived at the intensive care unit of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago five weeks earlier and spent the time attached to a breathing machine and an ECMO machine. “For days she was one COVID-XNUMX patient on the ward and possibly the entire hospital,” said Dr. Beth Malsin, specialist in lung disease.
Doctors put a lot of effort into keeping the young woman alive. “One of the most exciting moments was the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus test result, which turned out to be negative. It was the first sign that the patient was able to remove the virus and thus qualify for a life-saving transplant, ”said Malsin.
In early June, a young woman’s lungs showed signs of irreversible damage from COVID-19. Transplant was the only option to survive. The patient also began to develop multi-organ failure – as a result of severe lung damage, the pressure began to rise, which in turn put a strain on the heart, then the liver and kidneys.
Before the patient was put on the transplant waiting list, she had to test negative for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. When this was successful, the doctors continued treatment.
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The patient was unconscious for several weeks. When the COVID-19 test was finally negative, doctors continued to save lives. Due to the large damage to the lungs, waking the patient was very risky, so the doctors contacted the patient’s family and together they made the decision to transplant.
48 hours after reporting the need for a double lung transplant, the patient was already lying on the operating table and being prepared for the 10-hour surgery. A week after the transplant, the young woman began to recover. She regained consciousness, is in a stable state, and began to communicate with the environment.
It is not the first time that we inform about such a dramatic course of the disease in a young person. In Italy, a double lung transplant was performed on an 2-year-old patient who was also infected with the SARS-CoV-XNUMX coronavirus.
Dr. Ankit Bharat, head of thoracic surgery and director of surgery for the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program, said in a press conference that he and his colleagues wanted to know more about this patient’s case. What made a healthy 20-year-old woman so hard to get infected. Like the 18-year-old Italian, she also had no comorbidities.
Bharat also emphasized that the 20-year-old has a long and potentially risky road to recovery, but given how bad she is, doctors are hoping to make a full recovery. He also added that he would like other transplant centers to see that although the transplant procedure for COVID-19 patients is technically quite difficult, it can be performed safely. “Transplant offers terminally ill COVID-19 patients the chance to survive,” he added.
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