The woman, who is the mother of a two-year-old daughter, underwent a transplant on June 18 at the Motol University Hospital. She still needs intensive care and will still have to wait to return to normal life, even though her condition, according to doctors, is slightly improving, the VFN said.
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The patient with massive sputum from the lungs and heart failure was admitted by VFN doctors in mid-December last year. “After the introduction of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the so-called ECMO, local experts approached a unique method of eliminating the lungs from the circulation and using artificial extracorporeal lungs. A similar operation has been performed on only about twenty patients in the world in the last ten years. It was absolutely unique in the Czech Republic, “said the hospital.
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According to the head physician of the Department of Anesthesia and Resuscitation of the General Hospital, Martin Balík, the woman’s condition was initially so difficult that the transplant was unfeasible. The patient therefore received a bypass that bypassed her lungs. “We allowed her to live with an extracorporeal lung suspended from her chest so that her body would have some time to recover and prepare for a future lung transplant, which was her only prospect,” he added.
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The method used according to Balík replaced lung function in a relatively simple way. The patient’s lungs were so damaged by hypertension that the blood was not pushed through them and without the support of extracorporeal circulation, the woman would not live. “Normally, people have an extracorporeal oxygenator for ten days, the world record has been 79 days so far,” said Balík.
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According to him, the patient’s waiting for a transplant was also extended by the fact that the Czech Republic is not a member of Eurotransplant and the offer of organs from other countries is therefore very limited. “Compared to Austria, which is in the Eurotransplant, for example, we have a 20-fold mortality rate for patients waiting for donor lungs,” he said.
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According to the data of the Coordination Center for Transplants (KST), the number of lung transplants in the Czech Republic has roughly doubled in the last ten years. Last year, 42 patients received replacement lungs in Czech hospitals, for example in 2010 there were 17. Over 40, the annual number of lung transplants in the Czech Republic has remained in the last four years.
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