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CHICAGO (CBS) — A California doctor battling advanced stage lung cancer is now cancer-free after surgeons at Northwestern Memorial Hospital completed the first-ever lung and liver transplant on a cancer patient.
Dr. Gary Gibbon received two new lungs and a liver six months ago. Last year, doctors diagnosed the Santa Monica pulmonologist with stage 3 lung cancer.
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“As a pulmonologist, allergist and immunologist, the irony of receiving a diagnosis of lung cancer was devastating,” he said.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, with more people dying from lung cancer than colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.
“Nothing on this scale has ever been done before in patients with active cancer.”
The gibbon underwent chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy, but the treatments destroyed its lungs and damaged its liver beyond repair.
In September, he was taken to Northwestern Medical School in Chicago for life-saving surgery.
“Never before has a treatment of this magnitude been performed on a patient with active cancer,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery at Northwestern University.
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Bharat removed a gibbon’s cancerous lung, transplanted a new lung, and removed what could be billions of highly resistant cancer cells from his airways and chest cavity. I paid attention to this.
“We used some of the same principles we used in COVID-19 transplants and applied them to patients with advanced lung cancer to carefully remove their lungs without leaking a single cancer cell from the bloodstream. “I did,” Bharat said.
“We’re in a transplant renaissance right now.”
All the while, the gibbon donor liver was in a liver perfusion device. This device is a relatively new technology that supplies the organ with warm, oxygen-rich blood to keep the liver alive until transplantation.
“We’re in a transplant renaissance right now,” said Dr. Satish Nadig, director of organ transplantation at Northwestern University.
Gibbons are currently cancer-free. Doctors at Northwestern University gave him a new stethoscope Thursday to listen to his new lungs.
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“Everyone who has come into contact with me and cared for me will forever be an angel in my life,” Gibbon said.
Gibbon just celebrated his 69th birthday and hopes for more.
