Double lung transplant saves American with terminal cancer

US doctors announced on Thursday that they had successfully transplanted both lungs from a man with terminal cancer, giving new hope to other patients who are in the advanced stages of the deadly disease.

Albert Khoury, a 54-year-old non-smoker, underwent a seven-hour surgery to receive his new lungs at Northwestern Medicine Hospital in Chicago on September 25, 2021.

Six months later, her lungs are working fine and there are no signs of cancer in her body.

“My life went from zero to 100…” said the patient, who now leads a normal life and can work and go to the gym without the need for respiratory assistance.

“Lung transplantation for lung cancer is extremely rare and few cases are known,” said Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern Medicine, in a statement.

“For patients with stage 4 cancer, lung transplantation is considered a complete ‘no’, but since Albert’s cancer was only lodged in the chest, we were confident that we could eliminate all the cancer during surgery and save his life. life,” explained Bharat.

In early 2020, Khoury was working as a concrete finisher for the city of Chicago, when he started experiencing back pain, sneezing, chills, coughing, and discharge. At first he thought it was Covid-19, but he went to the doctor after he started coughing up blood, and that’s when the cancer diagnosis came.

In general, surgeons are reluctant to perform these transplants because, even if few cancer cells remain, there is a high chance that they will grow back in a patient who takes immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of Organs transplanted organs.

The few procedures of this type performed in the past have not been successful, but since then, advances in science have allowed doctors to better understand the spread of cancer.