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– Surgeons in Japan say they have performed a unique operation that will give hope to coronavirus patients with severe lung damage. In the world’s first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a COVID patient, a woman who spent months on a life-support machine received transplants of healthy tissue from her husband and her son, CNN reports. Doctors say the woman’s lungs were no longer functional and she needed a lung transplant to live – but since organ donations from brain-dead patients are rare in Japan, it can take years for an organ to be 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 responsible for the surgery. Kyodo NewsThe woman received part of her husband’s right lung and part of her son’s left lung. The husband and son, accepting the risk of impaired lung function, are in a stable condition and the woman is expected to leave the hospital in about two months. Doctors say the woman, whose name has not been released, had no pre-existing conditions before a coronavirus infection destroyed her lungs late last year. (Last year in the US, a double lung transplant saved the life of a COVID patient in his 20s.)