Jay Lackritz
Forum Leader
Username: Jay_ny
Post Number: 486
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Friday, December 16, 2011 - 07:56 am: | 
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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Making lung transplants more viable, with an experimental new technique could save thousands of lives. Lungs are the most difficult organs to transplant. Only 20 percent of donor lungs are useable, but this new research could change that.
It’s been a long journey for Patricia Kingsbury. She’s been waiting six months for a lung transplant.Fewer than 2,000 lung transplants are performed in the United States each year because there aren’t many donor organs available.
Now an experimental procedure, being tested at Columbia Medical Center could dramatically increase the availability of lungs for transplant.
The Human Ex-Vivo Lung Profusion System allows doctors to determine if donor lungs will work before they’re transplanted.
“Lungs that we have concerns and that we would otherwise turn down at assessment, we have the opportunity to further test,” said Dr. Frank D’Ovidio, Surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center.
A special fluid, that is a blood substitute, is circulated in the lungs providing nutrients. Sensors inside the lungs tell doctors if the organs will work.
Read more and watch video:
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2011/12/14/new-procedure-promising-for-some-transplant-patients/
Video only: http://tinyurl.com/76t8ed3
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