Doctors from Missouri, US, saved a man who needed a double-lung transplant using antibiotics, an artificial lung, and DD-size breast implants, Live Science reports.
A 34-year-old Missouri man started smoking cigarettes 13 years ago until switching to e-cigarettes in 2014. In April 2023, he experienced shortness of breath and fell ill with the flu. At the same time, he had a bacterial infection in his lungs that was resistant to antibiotic therapy.
Subsequently, the man was sent to a St. Louis hospital, where he was placed on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine that replaces the function of the heart and lungs, but his condition worsened and he needed a lung transplant. The case was taken up by doctors from the Northwestern Medicine Institute. The man’s lungs were so heavily infected that they started to liquify, and there was nothing on an X-ray, because his lungs were filled with pus.
The doctors came to the conclusion that, for the patient to survive the transplant, his infection would need to clear first, and to do that his lungs needed to be removed. An ECMO machine was remodeled so that it could supply oxygenated blood to the man’s heart and the rest of his body. At the same time, the experts needed a way to physically support the patient’s heart in the chest cavity, given that the lungs would be removed, so the doctors decided to use breast implants. As a result, DD-size breast implants were placed inside the patient, which allowed for the surgery to be a success.