Living life without lungs

More than 2,000 people in the U.S. received a lung transplant last year, and thousands more are on waiting lists. Now, surgeons have developed an innovative way to extend a patient’s life while they’re waiting for a donor.

Davey Bauer was a beneficiary. At 34, his lungs were damaged beyond repair. A snowboarder, skateboarder, fisherman, and golfer, he was also a pack-a-day smoker. Ten years ago, he switched to vaping. “It’s, honestly, more addicting than cigarettes,” Bauer said.

Last year, he caught the flu. It was the last straw for his lungs.

“I felt a little short of breath, was coughing up a lot of secretions,” Bauer said.

“The lungs, you know, were so heavily infected that they started to liquefy, and he had developed puss in both his cavities. And, literally, if you look at his x-ray, there’s nothing left,” said his thoracic surgeon Dr. Ankit Bharat.

Bauer’s condition was so dire that surgeons at Northwestern Medicine created a new life-saving procedure to save him.

“It was very clear to me that he needed a double-lung transplant, but it was also very clear that he would not survive that transplant.” Dr. Bharat removed his damaged lungs and created an artificial lung.

“After we took both his lungs out and engineered a system that could be attached to his body and keep his blood flow to the heart, keep his brain and other organs perfused,” Dr. Bharat said.

They placed double-D breast implants inside his chest cavity to keep Bauer’s heart in place. “Within 24 hours after we took out the lungs, his body started to get better,” Dr. Bharat said.

Within 48 hours, Bauer had a new set of donor lungs. “I can’t even put it into words. I mean, they gave me a second chance at life.”

Doctors believe this new procedure could help others survive when they’re out of options—giving their bodies time to heal and giving them the best possible chance of surviving a lung transplant.