Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First-Known Double Lung Transplant For COVID-19 Offers Potential Path Forward For Severe Cases
A young woman whose lungs were destroyed by the coronavirus received a double lung transplant last week at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, the hospital reported on Thursday, the first known lung transplant in the United States for Covid-19. The 10-hour surgery was more difficult and took several hours longer than most lung transplants because inflammation from the disease had left the woman鈥檚 lungs 鈥渃ompletely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm,鈥 said Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine, which includes Northwestern Memorial Hospital, in an interview. (Grady, 6/11)
Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of Northwestern鈥檚 lung transplant program, said organ transplantation may become more frequent for victims of the most severe forms of covid-19. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus most commonly attacks the respiratory system but also can inflict damage on kidneys, hearts, blood vessels and the neurological system. (Bernstein and Powers, 6/11)
The Chicago patient is in her 20s and was on a ventilator and heart-lung machine for almost two months before her operation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The 10-hour procedure was challenging because the virus had left her lungs full of holes and almost fused to the chest wall, said Dr. Ankit Bharat, who performed the operation. (Tanner, 6/11)
The woman has a long road to recovery ahead. Bharat says her body started to show antibodies against the transplanted organ, so she has been given medication aimed at preventing her body from rejecting the lungs. Since she spent weeks sedated in bed prior to the transplant, her body is weak. She is not able to stand or take deep breaths on her own, but Bharat says they expect to be able to take her off the ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) device, which has been pumping and oxygenating her blood outside of her body. (Herman, 6/12)
The patient had spent six weeks in Northwestern's COVID intensive care unit on a ventilator and a machine that supports the heart and lungs, Northwestern Medicine said in a statement. She needed to test negative for the virus before doctors could put her on the waiting list for a transplant. (Goldberg, 6/11)
