Doctors in Japan announced on Thursday that they have successfully performed the world’s first lung tissue transplant from living donors to a patient with severe lung damage since COVID-19.
The recipient, identified only as a woman from the western region of Kansai in Japan, is recovering from the operation for almost 11 hours on Wednesday, Kyoto University Hospital said in a statement. It has been said that her husband and son, who donated parts of their lungs, are also in stable condition.
The university said it was the world’s first lung tissue transplant from living donors to a person with COVID-19 lung damage. Transplants from brain-dead donors in Japan are still rare, and living donors are considered a more realistic option for patients.
Kyoto University Hospital through AP
“We have shown that we now have a lung transplant option (from living donors),” Dr. Hiroshi Date, a thoracic surgeon at the hospital that conducted the operation, told a news conference. “I think this is a hopeful treatment for patients” with severe lung damage from COVID-19, he said.
Kyoto University said dozens of lung transplants were performed from dead brain donors to patients with COVID-19-related lung damage in the United States, Europe and China.
The woman contracted COVID-19 late last year and developed breathing difficulties that quickly worsened. She was placed on a life support device that works as an artificial lung for more than three months at another hospital because her lungs were so badly damaged.
Even after she was released from the virus, her lungs were no longer functional or treatable, and the only option for her to live was to receive a lung transplant, the university said.
Her husband and son volunteered to donate parts of their lungs, and the operation was performed at Kyoto University Hospital by a 30-member team led by Dr. Date. Her husband donated part of her left lung, and her son donated part of her right lung.
He expects to be able to leave the hospital in about two months and return to normal life in about three months, the university said.
The operation marks the latest pioneering lung transplant during the coronavirus pandemic. In March, doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago successfully transplanted both lungs into a patient with COVID-19 using a donor who had previously recovered from the virus. And last year, surgeons at the hospital performed the first successful double lung transplant of a patient with COVID-19 in the USA