American doctors announced on Thursday that they had succeeded in performing a double lung transplant on a patient with terminal lung cancer, raising hopes for other advanced patients.
The patient in question, Albert Khoury, a 54-year-old non-smoker, spent seven hours on the operating table to receive his new lungs, at Northwestern Medicine Hospital in Chicago, on September 25, 2021.
Six months later, her new lungs are functioning well and no trace of cancer cells have been found in her body.
“Lung transplants are extremely rare in lung cancer, with very few known examples,” Ankit Bharat, chief thoracic surgeon at Northwestern Medicine, said in a statement.
“For patients with stage 4 cancer, lung transplantation is considered absolutely out of the question, but since Albert’s cancer was confined to his chest, we were confident that we might rid him of all cancer cells in the operation and save his life.”
Surgeons are generally reluctant to perform this type of transplant because the risk of relapse in a patient who must take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the transplant is very high if even a few cancer cells in the body.
The first few surgeries of this kind failed, but doctors now know more regarding how cancers spread.
Albert Khoury’s symptoms appeared in early 2020: back pain, sneezing, chills, cough…
This Chicago construction worker initially thought it was Covid-19, before he started coughing up blood and called his doctor.
The exams reveal stage 1 cancer. “But because of the wave of Covid-19, I might not start treatment immediately,” he said in a press release.
In July 2020, his cancer had worsened, at stage 2. And the chemotherapy did not prevent it from progressing further, at stages 3 then 4.
He had been told that he would not survive it, when his sister told him regarding lung transplants at Northwestern Medicine Hospital, a pioneer in this field.
In 2020, a team led by surgeon Ankit Bharat had already performed a double transplant on a young woman whose lungs had been ravaged by Covid-19.
– “To smile” –
After further attempts at treatment, Albert Khoury, whose condition was deteriorating, was deemed eligible for this transplant because his cancer, although stage 4, had not spread to any other organs.
The team that operated on him had to, in six hours, remove “trillions” of cancerous cells from his lungs, taking care not to let them come into contact with his chest or his bloodstream.
“It was a thrilling night,” summarized Ankit Bharat.
Albert Khoury can now lead a normal life, work or play sports without respiratory assistance.
“I haven’t smiled for over a year, but now I can’t stop,” he said.
After its success, Ankit Bharat’s team set out to develop new protocols to determine who else might be eligible for such treatment.
“We are now convinced that it is possible to offer a transplant in the case of cancer.
Lung cancer is by far the deadliest in the United States, with nearly one in four deaths related to this disease.
