healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - Printable Version
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healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - 82lsju - 06-12-2020
Quote:For the first time, surgeons at Northwestern Medicine performed a double-lung transplant on a patient whose lungs were damaged by COVID-19. The patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, spent six weeks in the COVID ICU on a ventilator and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a life support machine that does the work of the heart and lungs. By early June, the patient’s lungs showed irreversible damage. The lung transplant team listed her for a double-lung transplant, and 48 hours later, performed the life-saving procedure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
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Before putting the patient on the transplant wait-list, she had to test negative for COVID-19.
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“How did a healthy woman in her 20s get to this point? There’s still so much we have yet to learn about COVID-19. Why are some cases worse than others? The multidisciplinary research team at Northwestern Medicine is trying to find out,” says Rade Tomic, MD, a pulmonologist and medical director of the Lung Transplant Program.
https://www.nm.org/about-us/northwestern-medicine-newsroom/press-releases/2020/lung-transplant-performed-on-covid-19-patient-at-northwestern-medicine
RE: healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - dabigv13 - 06-12-2020
The photo of her lung is really something. Oof.
Glad she was able to get this life saving surgery. I can only imagine there will be many more patients like her coming up. Could tax the organ supply, and of course this surgery is no panacea, she will be on immunosuppressive medications for the rest of her life which will increase her risk of infection or cancer.
RE: healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - 2006alum - 06-12-2020
Note also that in terms of the statistics we have primarily been tracking (number of deaths), her case would not count, and would just be among the hundreds of thousands of "recovered." And yet we have almost no sense of how many of those "recovered" are not, and may not ever be, fully back to the health they had prior to coming down with COVID-19.
Sobering stuff.
RE: healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - BostonCard - 06-12-2020
Transplants generally are down due to COVID-19:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31040-0/fulltext
A lot of these are elective kidney transplants being deferred, but others are also affected. It could be a reduction in supply of organs due to fewer motor vehicle collisions from lower vehicular traffic.
BC
RE: healthy 20 year old with COVID-19 gets double lung transplant - M T - 06-12-2020
(06-12-2020, 11:40 AM)2006alum Wrote: And yet we have almost no sense of how many of those "recovered" are not, and may not ever be, fully back to the health they had prior to coming down with COVID-19.
Some early evidence. But I will point out that lung damage is only one symptom that may have long lasting consequences. I believe there have been circulatory issues as well. I've seen mention of mental issues.
Lancet article
Quote:However, a 15-year follow-up study of 71 patients with SARS showed that interstitial abnormalities and functional decline recovered over the first 2 years following infection and then remained stable. At 15 years, 4·6% (SD 6·4%) of the lungs showed interstitial abnormality in patients who had been infected with SARS.
Follow-up outcomes are less well described in patients with MERS. In a study of 36 patients who had recovered from MERS, chest x-rays taken a median of 43 (range 32–320) days after hospital discharge showed abnormalities described as lung fibrosis in about a third of the patients.
Science News article
Quote:In 70 patients who survived COVID-19 pneumonia, 66 had some level of lung damage visible in CT scans taken before hospital discharge