Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
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THURSDAY, March 28, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Dr. Gary Gibbon didn’t have long to live.
A grueling cocktail of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and immunotherapy for advanced patients lung cancer It permanently destroyed his lungs and caused irreparable damage to his liver.
But doctors at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago say Gibbon, 69, of Santa Monica, Calif., is staying alive thanks to an innovative combination lung and liver transplant.
“I’ve been a doctor for decades, and we tend to be conservative at times with our treatment plans. That’s why I’m in awe of the sheer amount of science that has gone into this treatment. ” said Gibbon, a pulmonologist and allergist. – immunologist said in a Northwestern news release.
Gibbon calls this breakthrough surgery “Triple L,” or two lungs and one liver.
“To our knowledge, this is the first case in Japan in which a patient with advanced lung cancer underwent a successful combination lung and liver transplant,” he said. Dr. Ankit Bharat, Chief of Thoracic Surgery and Director of the Thoracic Research Institute at Northwestern Medicine. Bharat performed lung transplant surgery on a gibbon.
Gibbon was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but spent the last 33 years of his life in a private practice in Santa Monica before becoming ill.
In March 2023, the gibbon started coughing and losing weight.Her chest X-ray revealed stage 3 lung cancer.
Doctors worked hard to treat the cancer, subjecting the gibbon to harsh chemotherapy, radiation therapy and immunotherapy.
By mid-July, Gibbon was hospitalized with septic shock, pneumonia, and multiple organ failure. His lungs will be irreversibly scarred by the immunotherapy and will need to be replaced.
“As a pulmonologist, I never imagined I would need a lung transplant, much less for lung cancer,” Gibbon said.
Northwestern University offers a first-of-its-kind clinical program called Double Lung Replacement and Multidisciplinary Treatment (DREAM), and Gibbon turned to doctors there to save his life.
While diagnosing the gibbon, doctors in the North West also discovered that the immunotherapy was causing cirrhosis.
After a four-hour medical flight, Gibbon arrived in Chicago on September 10th, waiting for donor organs in the ICU at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
After being on the transplant waiting list for 12 days, the gibbon received new lungs and a liver from the same donor during a 10-hour surgical procedure.
Surgeons first transplanted a new lung, but the donor liver was kept alive outside the body thanks to a machine that pumped warm, oxygen-rich, nutrient-rich blood into the organ. Doctors call this technique “liver in a box.”
The liver-preserving technique gave Bharat enough time to carefully remove the gibbon’s damaged lungs and any cancer.
Both of Bharat’s cancerous lungs had to be removed and her airway and chest cavity had to be cleaned before the new lungs were transplanted.
During this process, the gibbon had its heart and lungs completely bypassed, Bharat said.
“These patients can have billions of cancer cells in their lungs, so great care must be taken to ensure that not a single cell escapes into the patient’s thoracic cavity or bloodstream.” Mr. Bharat said. “We believe this technology can help reduce the risk of recurrence, as we learned from our pioneering COVID-19 lung transplant experience.”
Six months after the surgery, doctors said there were no signs of cancer in Gibbon’s body and no further treatment was needed.
Gibbon will remain in Chicago over the summer so the transplant team can monitor him closely.
“This DREAM program is a new frontier for transplants, and the fact that I was able to experience it and have such great results makes me so happy,” Gibbon said. “Without Northwestern Medicine, I wouldn’t be here today.”
The American Cancer Society details: lung cancer.
Source: Northwestern University, News Release, March 28, 2024
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