FRIDAY, April 9, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The world’s first transplant of lung tissue from living donors to a COVID-19 patient with severe lung damage was announced Thursday by doctors in Japan.
In the 11-hour operation at Kyoto University on Wednesday, the female recipient received lung tissue donated by her husband and son, CBS News reported. The woman is recovering and her husband and son are also in stable condition, according to the hospital.
There have been dozens of transplants of lung tissue from brain-dead donors to patients with COVID-19 lung damage in the United States, Europe, and China, but this is the first such transplant using live donors.
“We demonstrated that we now have an option of lung transplants (from living donors),” Hiroshi Date, M.D., a thoracic surgeon at the hospital who led the operation, said at a news conference, CBS News reported. “I think this is a treatment that gives hope for patients” with severe lung damage from COVID-19, he added.
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