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Surgeons keep patient alive without lungs for 48 hours. Here's how they did it

2026-02-04 18:24:01Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Surgeons keep patient alive without lungs for 48 hours. Here's how they did

In an extraordinary act of life-saving, surgeons managed to keep a critically ill man alive for 48 hours without lungs while he waited for a double lung transplant, a radical approach that could be used again for select patients.

A team from Northwestern University in the US built a complete artificial lung (TAL) system, which oxygenates the blood just as our lungs normally do, managing blood circulation and protecting the heart, writes Science Alert.

TAL was crucial in stabilizing the patient and preparing him to receive a pair of donor lungs. More than two years later, the individual has recovered and has fully functioning lungs. The story begins in the spring of 2023, when the 33-year-old suffered flu-related lung failure. This quickly progressed to pneumonia, sepsis, and what is known as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

"He had developed a lung infection that couldn't be treated with any antibiotics because it was resistant to everything," says thoracic surgeon Ankit Bharat.

"This infection caused his lungs to liquefy and then continued to spread to the rest of his body."

The standard approach would be to put the patient on life support and give the lungs time to recover. But here, the lungs were the main problem and the source of the infection: the patient seemed destined to die if the lungs were not removed, and would most likely die even if they were.

Surgeons keep patient alive without lungs for 48 hours. Here's how they did
The patients' new lungs (left) and old lungs (right)

Removing both lungs, a bilateral pneumonectomy, usually leads to heart failure due to interruptions in blood flow. To avoid this and overcome the limitations of previous attempts, the medical team behind TAL added dual blood flow channels and an adaptive shunt, allowing variations in blood flow to be equalized.

The machine was enough to keep the patient alive long enough for his body to recover enough to make a lung transplant feasible. After the organs were removed, signs of recovery from the infection began.

Bharat and his team performed a molecular analysis of the lungs after they were removed, confirming that there was no chance that the lungs would recover from ARDS on their own.

Teething and immune damage meant that in this case, a lung transplant was absolutely necessary.

“Lung transplants are reserved for patients who have chronic conditions like interstitial lung disease or cystic fibrosis,” says Bharat.

"Currently, people think that if you get severe ARDS, you continue to support the patient and eventually the lungs will get better."

This is an approach that could be used again to save more lives: while building a TAL system like this is currently only possible in specialized centers, Bharat hopes that the innovations applied here could be incorporated into standard equipment in the future.

While a double lung transplant might have previously been considered impossible in this scenario, we now know that it can be done and be successful and may be an option in future cases, although it still depends on rapid access to donor lungs.

“In my practice, young patients die almost every week because no one realized that transplantation was an option,” says Bharat. “For severe lung damage caused by respiratory infections, even in acute situations, a lung transplant can be lifesaving.”


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