Doctors in Japan announced on Thursday that they have successfully performed the world’s first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a patient with severe lung damage from COVID-19
The recipient, identified only as a woman from Japan’s western Kansai region, is recovering on Wednesday after the nearly 11-hour surgery, Kyoto University Hospital said in a statement. It said her husband and son, who donated parts of their lungs, are also in stable condition.
The university said it was the world’s first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a person with COVID-19 lung damage. Brain-dead donor transplants in Japan are still rare, and living donors are considered a more realistic option for patients.
Kyoto University Hospital via AP
“We have shown that we now have an option for lung transplants (from living donors),” said Dr. Hiroshi Date, a thoracic surgeon in the hospital who led the surgery, at a news conference. “I think this is a treatment that gives hope to patients” with severe lung damage from COVID-19, he said.
Kyoto University said dozens of transplants of parts of the lungs from brain-dead donors to patients with COVID-19-related lung damage have been performed in the United States, Europe and China.
The woman got COVID-19 late last year and had breathing difficulties that worsened quickly. She was placed on a life-sustaining machine that worked as an artificial lung for more than three months in another hospital because her lungs had been so badly damaged.
Even after she was free of the virus, her lungs were no longer functional or treatable, and the only option for her to live was to have a lung transplant, the university said.
Her husband and son volunteered to donate parts of their lungs, and the surgery was performed at Kyoto University Hospital by a team of 30 members led by Dr. Date. Her husband donated part of his left lung and son gave part of his right lung.
She is expected to leave the hospital in about two months and return to her normal life in about three months, the university said.
The surgery marks the latest groundbreaking lung transplant during the coronavirus pandemic. In March, doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago successfully transplanted both lungs to a COVID-19 patient 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 COVID-19 patient in the US.