First Lung Transplant on Coronavirus Patient Successful

shutdown are opening back up. While the majority of people who contract COVID nineteen only developed mild symptoms, there are those extreme cases where the virus reeks havoc on the body. In one such story, we're hearing of a patient in her twenties who received a double lung transplant, the first of its kind in the US since the pandemic began. Tests confirmed that her lungs were beyond repair and she would not survive without a transplant. She is now recovering,

but faces a long rehabilitation. Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Lenny, thanks for having me. I wanted to talk to you about a pretty interesting story in the coronavirus world. This is the story of an extreme case. And just so people know, the majority of people experience more mild symptoms. They don't get this bad. But that's

what makes this thing so interesting. We just had news that the first of its kind in the United States, a patient received a double lung transplant because her lungs got so bad after having COVID nineteen. Let me tell us a little bit about this story. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, even among hospitalized patients, this woman was one of the more severe cases. She was in the ICU for two months. She was on a ventilator for many weeks.

They even had to use ecmo with her, which is a device that takes the blood outside the body, puts oxygen in, and then routes it back into the body, sort of like a heart lung bypass machine and helps the heart pump it around. So she was really, really sick. Her lungs were so badly destroyed that her heart was starting to fail, her liberal was starting to fail. Other organs were involved, they weren't getting the oxygen they needed, and basically she would not have survived without this operation.

One of the most surprising things about this story, specifically is that she was in her twenties. I think in her later twenties, but still she was very young. I was very surprised when they told us that. I thought she was going to be older than that. Now they won't put a double lung transplant generally into people in their seventies and eighties, but I thought it was going to be somebody in their fifties, maybe sixties. So when

they told us twenties, I was very surprised. She was on immuno suppressing drugs prior to getting sick for a condition that they didn't reveal in order to preserve her privacy. But yeah, you didn't expect someone that young to get that severely ill. It may be because of these drugs, or there's previous condition, we don't know. But on top of that too, the doctor who was attending on her said that even though she was on those drugs, she

really had no other serious underlying health conditions. For the most part, she was pretty healthy. So it would be very interesting to see if those immunosuppressants played a part in her getting so sick. But from the most part she was healthy. Is kind of our understanding of it. That's exactly our understanding of it. So it's a little

bit unexpected in that way. Now, we do see these COVID cases that sort of come out of nowhere in people in their twenties and thirties and forties, who statistically are not the ones who are getting the most severe form of the disease. But you do anecdotally hear about some people who do get it. So we really don't know right now. You know, in a few weeks, hopefully you will be able to meet her and meet her family and find out more. There have been other lung

transplants associated with COVID nineteen. This is the first one in the United States that we know of, but there's been one in Austria and China, I believe so some of those had different cases to them, obviously, but doctors are really interested, you know, just because in some very severe cases, this might be the way to go. You're gonna see this more often. I believe it will not become frequent by any stretch of the imagination. It's not going to be a way to take care of most people.

But there are going to be a small number of people whose loans are so severely destroyed that they would never get off a ventilator. If it were not for transplant. I looked at a photo of her lungs and they were just demolished. The virus did such a number on her. She had secondary bacterial infections that they could not control with antibiotics because the blockages and her capillaries were so trashed that the drugs were just not reaching the infections

and having any effect whatsoever. So you are from time to time going to see this kind of thing. I wouldn't be surprised if you saw other organs transplanted as well. The doctor said that her lungs developed these strange holes that look like Swiss cheese. I saw some of the X rays as well, and it's just crazy to think of how this virus can affect the body in so many different ways. My understanding is also that she was on the organ transplant waiting list, thankfully not for very long,

only for two days now. The organ transplant waiting list is prioritized by the sickest people, and in fact there's a category for people who are almost in an emergent situation. So my guests, without knowing for sure, is that she was moved quickly to the top of the list once she became eligible for a transplant, and that they got very lucky and found this local donor, both of whose lungs were made suitable for her. It's often hard to

find lungs compared with kidneys and livers. There's not as many lung transplants in the United States even before COVID, and of course kidneys and livers you can do live donation loans. Of course you can't. This is a very extreme case, and I think for me that's why it's so interesting to know how far this virus can take people. You also helped write another piece just about other people that have been sick with coronavirus for more than sixty days.

They don't know if it's the virus is living that long, or if it's just kind of it's gone away, but the effect that it had on their body has the symptoms kind of reoccurring. So that's kind of another aspect of this is that it lasts pretty long in some people. As you pointed out a few minutes ago, this is a very nasty virus, and what makes it so nasty is its ability to affect different people in different ways.

So you have people who have a cute kidney injury you have people who have blood clots that travel to their brain or travel to their hearts. You have people whose lungs aren't destroyed. And now again anecdotally, we are hearing from people who continue to suffer symptoms for sixty or more days. And the symptoms sometimes come in waves where they're bad for a while, then they're good for

a while, and they come back again. The symptoms come in ways, different kinds of symptoms each week, So for while they're suffering from stomach problems, for another week they're suffering from respiratory problems. So this virus, if it turns out to be the virus, is a very versatile bug that is affecting people in all kinds of different ways. And we just wrote a story today, as you said, the people who have had to endure this kind of stuff for six eight ninety days and don't know when

that's gonna end. Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter at the Washington Post, thank you very much for joining us. My pleasure. Stay well. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this is reopening America. Don't forget After today's big news stories, you can check me out in the Daily Dive podcast. Every Monday through Friday, so follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast