Double-Lung Transplants Rise After Covid 'Honeycombs' Organs: Study

Covid may shrink the current pool of donor organs and affect their future availability.

John Micklus's battle with Covid-19 began last Christmas and ended five weeks later with lungs so damaged that doctors said there was nothing they could do to save him. "The doctor's recommendation was to get my affairs in order," Micklus said. The 62-year-old called his wife from his hospital bed in southern Maryland. She, in turn, desperately called several physicians, and eventually learned of one last option: A double-lung transplant. Micklus was transferred to the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, where a rigorous assessment qualified him to receive lungs from a matched donor days later. He was discharged from the hospital on March 30, marking the center's second successful lung transplant in a Covid survivor. Hospitals across the U.S. have reported a rise in lung transplants for severe coronavirus cases, the Cleveland Clinic, one of the country's top-ranked medical centers, said last week. The grueling surgery may be the only solution for patients who experience a life-threatening constellation of lung damage inflicted by the virus, a hyper-inflammatory immune response to it, and the body's failure to properly repair the injury.