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Survival High With Lung Transplant for COVID-19-Associated ARDS

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MONDAY, Feb. 14, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Lung transplantation is successful for patients with COVID-19-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), with high survival, according to a study published online Jan. 27 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Chitaru Kurihara, M.D., from Northwestern University in Chicago, and colleagues conducted a retrospective case series of 102 patients who underwent a lung transplant between Jan. 21, 2020, and Sept. 30, 2021, including 30 patients with COVID-19-associated ARDS.
Read the full story.

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Lung transplants encouraging treatment for COVID-19 patients, but long-term outcomes still uncertain

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Recent data bolster the value of lung transplants for some COVID-19 patients, indicating they do as well after surgery as those who needed new lungs for other reasons.

The complicated, risky procedure remains rare, though, doctors said, and there is still much they’re learning about how well transplants work for COVID-19 patients. Learn more here.

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Lung Transplant After COVID-19: What Patients Need to Know

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“COVID-19 is a complex disease. In some people, it can be a mild respiratory illness that is easy to recover from. In others, it can be severe and lead to a lengthy hospital stay. Patients with severe COVID-19 might need intensive care and a ventilator to help them breathe.

For people with severe illness, sometimes the only life-saving option is a lung transplant. As a pulmonologist who specializes in caring for both patients with severe COVID-19 and those who receive a transplant, I’ve seen firsthand the difference a lung transplant can make.

Here’s what our expert lung transplant team at the Temple Lung Center knows about performing these critical procedures”

Learn more here.

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How do your lungs work?

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“When you breathe, you transport oxygen to the body’s cells to keep them working and clear your system of the carbon dioxide that this work generates. The lungs take in air from the atmosphere and provide a place for oxygen to enter the blood and for carbon dioxide to leave the blood. The lungs are divided into sections, with three on the right and two on the left.”

Learn more from UNOS here.

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They Survived COVID. Now They Need New Lungs.

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“BOSTON — He survived Covid-19, but his lungs were ravaged. After months of deep sedation, he is delirious, his muscles atrophied. And this 61-year-old still cannot breathe on his own.

He was first intubated just after the winter holidays. Now, when he fully wakes, he will see that he is still attached to the ventilator by a tracheostomy tube in his neck. Slowly, he will come to learn that catheters the size of garden hoses are connecting his body to another device, a large extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine that has taken over the work of his failed lungs.

Gently, his doctors and family will tell him that his lungs are never going to recover, and that this machine is a bridge that will help keep him alive until he can receive a transplant. If it turns out that he is not a transplant candidate — if he cannot build up enough strength, or if he develops a catastrophic new infection or organ failure — the machine will eventually be turned off. And he will die.

He is not alone. Here in my hospital, we are caring for a new population of patients who have cleared the virus but are left with severe lung disease, trapped on ventilators and lung bypass machines.”

Read the full piece, here.

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A Patient Pioneer: Minimally Invasive Lung Transplantation

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Frank Coburn Is the First Patient in Southern California—and Possibly First in the U.S.—to Undergo the Lifesaving Surgery

“To anyone else, it’s just a walk around the block. But for Frank Coburn, 57, and his wife, it’s a miracle.

A miracle that resulted from Coburn becoming the first Southern Californian—and possibly first in the U.S.—to receive a minimally invasive double lung transplant. The procedure was performed at the Smidt Heart Institute.

“After getting the call that a pair of lungs became available and I needed to be at the hospital immediately, I remember being wheeled into the operating room, finally feeling calm and ready to trust the process,” recalled Coburn, a Huntington Beach resident and longtime boat mechanic. “Once I woke up, my care team shared I had undergone a minimally invasive procedure instead of the traditional, more invasive approach. I was so fortunate and felt so proud to be the first. Truly lucky.”

During a routine lung transplant, surgeons usually create a “clamshell” or sternotomy incision, which involves breaking the breastbone in two pieces and requires many patients to rely on a heart-lung machine.”

Read the full story, here.

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Mayo Clinic Q And A: How lung restoration improves organ availability

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“DEAR MAYO CLINIC: I was reading about lung restoration and innovation in the field of lung transplantation. Can you share more about this?

ANSWER: Over the past several years, devices outside the body have been used to evaluate human lungs donated for organ transplant before the lungs are transplanted. In the future, lung restoration may increasingly be used to treat donated lungs to make them healthier, so they could be viable for a transplant. The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of a device known as the Xvivo Perfusion System with Steen Solution Perfusate, which is being used at Mayo Clinic in Florida, in a model constructed to make organs available regionally. Other systems are being investigated.

A lung transplant can be a lifesaving procedure for people with serious lung diseases, such as pulmonary hypertension, emphysema, pulmonary fibrosis, bronchiectasis or cystic fibrosis. But the number of lungs available for transplant consistently falls far short of the number of people waiting for a lung transplant.”

Read the full Q&A, here.

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Advancements in Lung Transplants with the Cleveland Clinic Team

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“A trio of experts from the Cleveland Clinic join Dr. Rizzo for a talk on lung transplant trends and challenges in the US.

There are approximately just 2000 lung transplants conducted annually in the US—a rate which pales significantly to counts of yearly kidney and liver transplants, and is similar to the rate of heart transplants.

The count is in spite of numerous opportunities borne by the growing rate of possibly lethal chronic lung disease in the country, as well as by the fact that lung transplant has become a refined practice since first attempted a half-century ago.”

Listen to the podcast, here.

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UNOS: COVID-19 Update

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“On Oct. 28, two new diagnosis codes for lung candidates and two new diagnosis codes for heart candidates will be added to UNetSM. Additionally, there will be an update to an existing code available for heart candidates. The purpose of adding these options is to specify when COVID-19 related organ failure is the cause for lung and heart candidate listings.”

Read the full update by UNOS, here.

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