Reported August 20, 2007

TORONTO, Canada (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) – About 20 percent of people who need a lung transplant will die waiting for one. Unlike damaged kidneys or hearts, doctors say it’s very difficult to keep injured lungs working long enough to get a transplant. Now, a recent medical innovation could change the fate of patients who need a new lung.

Yen Tran is lucky to be alive. Last December, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension. “I would say it was like drowning without water,” Tran says. She was 20 years old, had three kids and was planning her own funeral. “It was difficult doing it,” she says. “I was not expecting to live.”

Pulmonary hypertension constricts vessels that lead to the lungs, making it nearly impossible for the heart to get oxygen-rich blood to the lungs.

“Many patients die of this disease,” says Tom Waddell, M.D., Ph.D., a thoracic surgeon at Toronto General Hospital in Ontario. “It can be quite rapidly progressive.”

A lung transplant can help, but many patients die before they get one. Tran was in the ICU waiting for a new lung when her heart stopped.

“If the physicians had stopped compressing her chest, she was dead,” Dr. Waddell says.

Tran was kept alive with a new artificial lung called the Novalung. She was the first person in North America to get it.

“It doesn’t require the use of a mechanical pump,” Dr. Waddell says. “That is the truly unique thing about it.”

The patient’s own heart pumps blood up a tube and into an oxygenator. There, the blood is filled with oxygen and returned to the body.

“In general, the results have been quite good for a group of patients that ultimately would face certain death,” says Dr. Waddell.

The Novalung bought Tran time until a donor lung was found. “It if wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be here today. My kids wouldn’t have a mom,” Tran says.

Now, instead of planning for her funeral, Tran is planning for her future.

If you would like more information, please contact:

Robert Thompson
Senior Public Health Affairs Advisor
University Health Network
Toronto, ON, Canada
robert.thompson@uhn.on.ca