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This story is from July 11, 2020

Desi doc who conducted 1st double lung transplant in US scripts history again

Desi doc who conducted 1st double lung transplant in US scripts history again
MEERUT: A Meerut-born surgeon in the US who created history after his team successfully performed a double lung transplant on a Covid-19 patient for the first time last month has now conducted another record-setting surgery — this time on a coronavirus patient who was on life support for 100 days.
The double lung transplant on a Covid-19 patient — only the second such surgery in the US — has sparked hope that the procedure could emerge as a life-saving treatment option for patients who develop severe respiratory disease.

Dr Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, assisted by two of his team members conducted the double lung transplant on a man in his sixties on July 5. The news of the operation was made public on Thursday after the patient started showing signs of recovery.
The only other known case where a Covid-19 patient underwent a successful double lung transplant after being on life support for such an extended time period is from South Korea. A 50-year-old woman who had spent 112 days on specialised life support had made a recovery after a double lung transplant surgery.
The patient Dr Bharat and his team operated upon this month had been on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support for 100 days and his lungs showed acute damage which made this surgery a complex one. “The survival rate of a lung transplant recipient who was on ECMO can be up to 10% lower than the survival rate of a person who was not on life support. I remember telling the patient's family that the odds of success were 50%," Dr Bharat told TOI.

Due to the severe inflammation, the procedure took 10 hours instead of the typical six to seven hours a double lung transplant can take. The patient is now showing signs of improvement and is able to talk to his family. “He should be discharged within two to three weeks,” said Dr Bharat.
Notably, the 40-year-old, an alumnus of St Mary’s Academy in Meerut, and his team were the first to conduct a double lung transplant in the US on a woman in her 20s whose lungs were devastated by coronavirus. “The woman has made a full recovery and has been discharged. In fact, she asked me if she could go skydiving,” he shared.
According to Dr Bharat, the success of double lung transplants suggest the procedure can be a ray of hope for Covid-19 patients with severe lung damage, potentially saving many lives worldwide.
In 2019, Dr Bharat had made headlines after he conducted the first-ever robot-assisted lung volume reduction surgery in the US.
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