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In Astounding Test, Scientists Revive Damaged Lungs for Transplant

Injured and unusable lungs were restored with respirators and pig blood. The procedure one day may increase the supply of organs for transplant.
The six lungs were taken from brain-dead patients and offered to transplant surgeons. But at major medical centers, one surgeon after another refused the organs.

They were damaged, swollen and soggy with fluid. Like 80 percent of lungs offered for transplant, these were just too far gone for the operation.

But researchers at Columbia and Vanderbilt saw an opportunity. They had been working for eight years on a system to restore damaged lungs.

They put each lung in a plastic box and attached it to a respirator so it could “breathe.” Then they connected each lung to a large vein in the neck of a live pig, so that its blood flowed through the vessels.
The results, reported on Monday in Nature Medicine, seem like pure science fiction: Within 24 hours, the lungs looked viable, and lab tests confirmed they had been resuscitated.

Now the researchers are considering using a human instead of a pig. They would hook a damaged lung to the patient with a large catheter inserted in the patient’s neck, and attach the lung to a respirator in the room. The transplant patient waiting for a lung could resuscitate one for himself.