In Delhi, a 31-year-old man, diagnosed with COVID-19 in March became the first person to undergo lung transplant. Doctors at Max Super Specialty Hospital, Saket, performed the life-saving procedure. The patient is a resident of Hardoi in Uttar Pradesh, is still on ventilator but awake and stable. Dr Rahul Chandola, associate director of adult CTVS and heart and lung transplant specialist at Max said that they are planning to extubate him on Wednesday.

The patient was diagnosed with silicosis, which is a long-term lung disease and caused by inhaling large amounts of crystalline silica dust for more than a year. It had compromised his lung function already. Chandola said that when the patient had contracted COVID-19, worsening of his lung function got accelerated. He was put on oxygen support immediately and remained for nearly four months now. He might not have survived for long without a lung transplant.

It almost took 10 hours, from 10.30pm on Saturday to 8.30am on Sunday, to perform the lung transplant. The procedure involved by making an incision in the chest, cutting the airways and blood vessels to the lung. Then they removed the diseased organ and replaced it with the healthy donor lung and reattached the airways and blood vessels before they closed the incision.

The patient received adonor lung from a 49-year-old woman from Jaipur who recently suffered fatal head injuries in a road accident. She was declared brain dead by the doctors at a private hospital. The family overcame their sorrow and decided to donate the organs after counselling the hospital in Jaipur. Officials at Max Hospital said that the harvested lungs were brought to Delhi by an Air India flight. A senior doctor said that coronavirus leads to irreversible lung damage in several patients with no past history of lung disease. This might increase the demand for lung transplant in the future days.

Lung transplant can only be carried out with an organ that is donated by a deceased person, same as a heart transplant. Till now, only 4,000 such transplants have been done globally, which includes around 200 in India. Except for one, all lung transplants in India are performed at private hospitals where the procedure costs Rs 20-30 lakh or more. Also, follow-up medications have to be taken lifelong and cost several lakhs a year.

Source: ET Healthworld