A group of Indian doctors from Chennai performed Asia’s first double lung transplant on a COVID patient on Saturday. This feat has been applauded by experts all over the world. Surgeons belonging to the MGM Health facility in Chennai performed this surgery and now offer new hope for COVID-19 patients who sustain severe lung damage due to the viral disease.
Dr KR Balakrishnan, Chairperson and Director of Cardiac Sciences and Director of the Heart and Lung Transplant Program at MGM Healthcare, led the transplant along with a team of specialists including Dr Suresh Rao, Dr Srinath, and Dr Apar Jindal.
This patient had been in the hospital since June 8 and had been put on ventilator support since June 20. His vitals had started dropping despite being in ventilator support and was airlifted to Chennai from Ghaziabad on July 20. Since his lung condition worsened despite having been in maximum ventilatory support care, he had been on ECMO since July 25 for about a month.
Doctors then decided to do an organ transplant, since his survival without it was questionable. They performed the surgery after finding a suitable donor on August 27. The donor was a 34-year-old man who had been declared brain dead at the Apollo Gleneagles Global Hospital after suffering an intracerebral haemorrhage on Thursday. The other organs of this donor like the heart, kidneys and eyes had gone to other different recipients in Chennai. It has been reported that both lungs are now in proper working condition.