Earlier this year, a team at Northwestern Medicine used breast implants to save the life of a 34-year-old man in need of a double lung transplant.
David "Davey" Bauer, a 34-year-old Missouri resident, started smoking at 21 and switched to vaping in 2014. In April, he developed a severe, antibiotic-resistant lung infection after catching the flu and was admitted to a hospital in St. Louis. His condition continued to decline and by May, Mr. Bauer's care team determined he needed a double lung transplant to survive and contacted Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine.
"When we received a call from Davey's medical team in St. Louis, we thought we could help him, but it was also very clear he wouldn't survive the transplant in his current condition," Rade Tomic, MD, pulmonologist and medical director of Northwestern's lung transplant program, said in a Nov. 8 news release from the health system. "He needed to clear the infection before we could list him for transplant, but the only way to do that was to remove both lungs."
The surgical team developed a strategy to remove the infected lungs and engineered an artificial external lung to keep blood flowing to the heart. To keep Mr. Bauer's heart from collapsing inside the chest cavity, the surgical team used DD breast implants. The procedure occurred in late May, marking a first for Northwestern. Within 24 hours, the care team found a match for the double-lung transplant.
Mr. Bauer spent several months recovering in the ICU and was discharged to rehabilitation therapy in late September. He will remain in the Chicago area for the next year to be close to his transplant team.
"With this new approach that we've developed, many patients who get to the point of needing a lung transplant — but their damaged lungs are making them too sick to get one — can now potentially get transplanted," Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern, said in the release. "I think it's going to open a lot of doors for many patients who have no other options."