“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.
It took less than 10 minutes for a drone to make an emergency 1.2 kilometer trip to deliver a set of lungs needed for a life-saving transplant.
This world-first took place at the end of September, in Toronto, Canada, AFP reported.
The drone flew over the skies of the Canadian metropolis in the middle of the night, taking off from the UHN’s Toronto Western Hospital and landing on the roof of the General Hospital.
The operation was made possible due to a refrigerated container in light carbon fibre which maintains the thermal parameters of the organ so that it is viable for transplantation.
Read full story here.
“A three-drug combination for a certain form of cystic fibrosis (CF) not addressed with other therapies met its efficacy and safety endpoints in a phase III trial, researchers said.
Elexacaftor, tezacaftor, and ivacaftor (Trikafta) together improved forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and lowered chloride levels in sweat in CF patients with Phe508del-gating or Phe508del-residual function genotypes, relative to a control regimen of ivacaftor either alone (Kalydeco) or with tezacaftor (Symdeko), reported Peter J. Barry, MD, of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust in England, and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine.”
Read more, here.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of the transplant drug tacrolimus (Progaf) for the prevention of organ rejection in adult and pediatric patients receiving lung transplants. This is the only immunosuppressant drug approved for this patient population.
Tacrolimus has been routinely prescribed to lung transplant recipients for the past 15 to 20 years and is “the primary calcineurin inhibitor used as the backbone of immunosuppression for lung transplants,” Joshua Diamond, MD, associate medical director of the Penn Lung Transplant Program at Penn Medicine, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told Medscape Medical News in an interview.
Read more, here.
Hospitals across the country have reported a rise in lung transplants for patients with severe cases of COVID-19, and that’s created new challenges for doctors along the way.
“COVID-19 has really struck the transplant community in a very unique way, from the donor side of things to the recipient side of things. So we’ve had to think about the donors that we are taking to transplant. And for a while there, we thought donor activity would actually become an issue and that we wouldn’t have enough donors,” said Marie Budev, MD, medical director of lung transplantation for Cleveland Clinic.
Read more, here.
Huntington Beach man has had a second chance at life after he received the nation’s first ever minimally invasive double-lung transplant. 57-year-old Frank Coburn was beginning his second chapter, enjoying life with his loving bride of more than 30 years, and the success of his two adult daughters, when the avid biker started experiencing shortness of breath.
“I would always cough on an intake, and I’d have to kind of belly breathe,” Coburn told CBS2 News This Morning’s DeMarco Morgan.
In March of 2020, he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis.
Read the full story, here.
When you have Cystic Fibrosis – a genetic disease that causes persistent lung infections – a lung transplant can be a life-saving surgery. But what if you’re not sure you want it? And if you do get it, what new challenges will they present to your newly-extended life?
Hear an audio documentary by Audacious Executive Producer Catie Talarski that follows two CF patients for one year as they grapple with the choice to pursue lung transplants. Then, she catches up with one of the subjects 10 years later.
Listen to it here.
The Lung Transplant Foundation (LTF) Joseph J. Carter Mentorship Program connects transplant recipients and caregivers with trained volunteer Mentors who have gone through the lung transplant process themselves.
It provides an essential link between people living successfully following their transplant experience and those new or adjusting to life after a transplant.
Whether someone has lived with an illness for a long time or has been newly diagnosed with an end-stage lung disease, they may feel alone and uncertain about where to turn for help–especially when they learn that a lung transplant is required.
Find more information, here.
“For many patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19, surviving the virus is only half of the battle. Once deemed virus-free and ready to be sent home, the often-long road to recovery – including rebuilding lung capacity and overall respiratory health – begins.
Two Cedars-Sinai respiratory therapists explain what roadblocks these hospital-admitted patients face when it comes to lung health and offer tips for non-patients looking to improve their overall respiratory health.
“Patients with COVID-19 tend to be sicker for much longer than other patients with respiratory-related illnesses and, on average, stay on a ventilator for a longer duration,” said Dagoberto Naranjo, RRT, a respiratory therapist in the Department of Respiratory Therapy at Cedars-Sinai.
These ventilated patients also take longer to react, or benefit from, oxygenation efforts, according to Naranjo.”
Read full article, here.
“Long before COVID-19 changed the world, organ transplant recipients were wearing masks to shield themselves from airborne threats.
Immunosuppressive medicines, which often are a lifelong requirement after a transplant, add an extra layer of protection against viruses as common as a cold or as dangerous as COVID. Transplant patients are told to use masks for any group gatherings or airplane flights, and hand sanitizing is a must.
While COVID has brought a heightened awareness of these patients’ health risks and fragility, a recent study by Johns Hopkins University researchers in Baltimore, Maryland, and a report from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, may raise their sense of unease even further.”
Read the full article, here.