(Newser)
– Surgeons in Japan say they have performed a first-degree operation that will give hope to coronavirus patients with severe lung damage. In the world’s first lung tissue transplant from living donors to a COVID patient, a woman who spent months on a life-support device received healthy tissue transplants from her husband and son, CNN reports. Doctors say the woman’s lungs were no longer functional and she needed a lung transplant to survive – but since organ donations from brain-dead patients are rare in Japan, it could be years before an organ is 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, on Kyodo News. The woman received part of her husband’s right lung and part of her son’s left lung. The husband and son, who have accepted the risk of declining lung function, are in a stable condition and expect the woman to leave the hospital in about two months. Doctors say the woman, whose name was not released, did not have pre-existing conditions before a coronavirus infection destroyed her lungs late last year. (In the US last year, a double lung transplant saved the life of a 20-year-old COVID patient.)