A young American female with lungs ravaged by Covid-19 just got a second lease at life, after surgeons at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital performed a transplant. Performed last week, the surgery went well, and the patient is currently recuperating. Chief of Thoracic Surgery and Surgical Director at Northwestern, Dr Ankit Bharat later addressed a press conference.
He said, “The patient is in stable condition and improving every day. While she still has a long road ahead of her, I'm extremely hopeful that she's going to make a full recovery. She told me this one sentence. She said, 'Doc, thank you for not giving up on me.' If she didn't get the transplant, she would not be alive.” The hospital said it believes this is the first time such an operation on a Covid-19 patient has been performed successfully in the US, and that it offers new hope for patients with extensive lung damage from coronavirus infection.
A press release from the hospital said the patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s “was the sickest person in the Covid ICU – and possibly the entire hospital”. “There were so many times, day and night, our team had to react quickly to help her oxygenation and support her other organs to make sure they were healthy enough to support a transplant if and when the opportunity came. One of the most exciting times was when the first coronavirus test came back negative and we had the first sign she may have cleared the virus to become eligible for a life-saving transplant.”
