A total artificial lung system developed at Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine kept a patient alive for 48 hours after lung removal and prior to lung transplant, according to a study publishing Jan. 29 in Med.
The procedure took place in 2023 on a patient with severe lung damage related to an initial case of influenza that had progressed to necrotizing pneumonia and sepsis.
“[The patient] had developed an infection of his lungs that just could not be treated with any antibiotics because it was resistant to everything,” Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and executive director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, said in a Jan. 29 news release from the health system. “That infection caused his lungs to liquify and then continued to progress to the rest of his body.”
Once the diseased lungs were removed and the patient was placed on the artificial lung system, the patient’s condition began to improve. A double-lung transplant was performed 48 hours later. The patient maintains “excellent” lung function more than two years later, the release said.
“We take the most pride in trying to formulate solutions for problems that don’t have a solution right now,” Dr. Bharat told Becker’s in January when discussing the Northwestern transplant program’s strategy for “solution-based innovation.”
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