"In 2023 thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat was working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when he was drafted to help a 33-year-old influenza patient who was on the verge of death. Bharat recalls that the man had developed a secondary infection from one of the most dreaded bugs in the hospital, Pseudomonas, and had been put on a ventilator. The patient's lungs were filling with fluid and pus, his kidneys were failing, and his heart was barely working, Bharat says. He was actively dying."
"Then the patient's heart stopped. We got him backbut it was very clear that we had to do something right away, Bharat says. The sick man needed a double-lung transplant, but there was a problem: he was too sick for Bharat and his colleagues to attempt the operation. But Bharat knew that without a working set of lungs, the patient would die regardless."
"Chitaru Kurihara (left) and Ankit Bharat (right) operate on the patient, removing his damaged lungs and attaching the artificial lungs. Bharat likens the novel system to adding a bridge to a highwaylike interstate traffic, blood travels from the right side of the heart to the lungs, then to the left side of the heart and then on to the rest of the body."
A 33-year-old influenza patient developed a secondary Pseudomonas infection, requiring ventilation while lungs filled with fluid and pus, kidneys failed, and heart function weakened. The patient arrested, was resuscitated, but remained too unstable for immediate double-lung transplantation. ECMO support proved insufficient in the absence of functional lungs. The surgical team designed and built artificial lungs to bridge circulation from the right to the left side of the heart, oxygenate blood, and maintain systemic perfusion. Surgeons removed the diseased lungs and attached the artificial device, restoring flow and enabling further transplant options.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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